What’s this?

This is a guide from https://hirehire.ai/ on how to conduct job interviews.

It’s also a guide on where and how we think AI can and cannot help recruiters and hiring managers.

We wrote it for internal use first and let every employee read it. And then we thought, why not open it up to everyone?

We hope it will help everyone who would like to improve their interviewing skills.

In separate sections of the guide, we explain how to prepare for an interview, what to do during the interview itself and immediately after. At the very end, we share thoughts about the general attitude.

Before the interview

• Work with the hiring manager to outline the results you expect the new hire to bring. Make sure that we really need a new employee.

  • There are lots of possible questions and separate guides needed for intake (briefing) sessions but just as a starting point, we usually ask about:

    Area	Questions
    Objectives	- What are the key goals or objectives you'd like the new hire to help you achieve?

    • What are the (in)formal KPIs? How will you make sure the job is well done? | | Team & Company | - Can you provide a brief overview of your company, including its mission, values, and culture?
    • How does your company handle diversity and inclusion, and are there any specific initiatives in place?
    • What is the reason for a new hire?
    • What is the team structure?
    • Who does the role report to?
    • Who the candidate collaborates with? | | Ideal Candidate Profile | - What are the essential skills, qualifications, and experience required for this role? Which of them are must vs preferable?
    • What are the desired soft skills or personal attributes you are looking for in a candidate? Which of them are must vs preferable?
    • What seniority level / grade is needed to accomplish the goals of this role?
    • What career opportunities are available for this role? | | Conditions | - What location is preferable or required? Do you support relocation?
    • What is a salary range?
    • Other are other benefits?
    • Who will onboard the new employee and how? Is there a buddy system in place? | | Role / company pitch | - What makes this role appealing? Why would it be great for candidates? |

• You can also ask ChatGPT (or another model of your choice) to help generate question to ask your hiring manager. Here’s an example of a prompt:

  I'm a recruiter and I'm planning to have an intake session with my hiring manager. We're opening the role of a [Product Manager]. Please help me generate questions that I should ask my hiring manager to better define the role.
  

• Describe the skills, values, and qualities a person needs to successfully perform the job at your company. (If you have a competency matrix for the role, it describes exactly these traits)

  • You will also collaborate with the hiring manager to ensure the list is complete and accurate.
  • While there might be a temptation to list 15 different skills and qualities, we believe it's better to select 3—5 most crucial competencies and focus on them.

So, what questions to ask during interviews?

• For each skill / value / quality, we formulate a question or several questions that should give us a clear signal on how much a person demonstrates them. Questions like "tell about a situation when you ..." tend to work great.

  • This can also be done with ChatGPT by uploading the information about your company and job. Example of a prompt:

    I'm preparing to interview candidates for the role of the [Product Manager] at [Your Company]. In our conversation with the hiring manager, we have decided that the most important skills and competencies are the following:
    - [previous experience building mobile apps]
    - [autonomy, taking freedom and responsibility]
    - [collaboration with engineering.]
    Please help us frame situational questions to assess this competencies at a job interview.
    

  • Situational questions are also good because the candidate cannot generate the right answers — these are questions about their specific experience, so ChatGPT won’t help them.

  • For some topics , the format of projective questions is more suitable, that is, when we ask the candidate to reflect on someone else, instead of themselves.

  • For certain topics, it's useful to ask projective questions. These are questions where we ask the candidate to reflect on someone else, rather than themselves. Reflecting on another person can reduce stress for the candidate and remove the pressure to provide socially approved answers. This approach helps reveal the candidate's hidden opinions and attitudes towards various subjects. Additionally, candidates rarely prepare responses for this type of question.

    • For example: Have you ever worked in a team with an underperformer? Could you describe what made this person underperform? How did it impact the team? What would you suggest the manager do in such a situation?

  • Hypotetical questions, such as "imagine that you need to do .... How would you approach this?" are generally less effective. It's more beneficial to ask about the candidate's real experiences and request examples from their past.

  • In any situation ask open-ended questions that can't be answered with a simple "yes" or "no". This way, the candidate will be able to give you a lot of important context beyond the direct answer to your question.

  • You may also want to supplement each question about a certain situation from past experience with some clarifying questions. For example, using the STAR method: Situation — Target — Action — Result.

  Here are a few examples:

  What we want to evaluate	Question suggestions
  Work Experience	- Tell me about your work at company X.
  (Also: What role were you hired for? What exactly did you do? What outcomes did it lead to? What would you do differently if you were to start in this role again?)
  Product management or design skills	- Tell me about one of your recent projects.
  (Also: Where did the problem come from and how was it defined? What exactly did you do? What outcomes did it lead to? What would you do differently?)
  Motivation	- What made you apply for this role (or accept our invitation to the interview)?

  • What does your ideal role look like?
  • Where would you like to move in your career? What’s your dream role?
  • What other positions are you considering? (This question provides priceless information about the market + understanding how interesting our position is to the candidate)
  • Please give an example of an exciting and not interesting challenges for you. What makes them interesting? | | Candidate’s performance | When we ask your manager to evaluate your work on a scale of 1 to 10, what would they say? Why exactly that much? Why not 10? | | Communication skills | - Who do you usually interact with at work and how does it happen?
  • Can you recall someone in your team who wasn't easy to collaborate with? What was their problem, in your opinion?
  • Give me an example of a situation where you had to defend your point of view or convince someone.
  • Give me an example of a situation where you were convinced to change your opinion.

  // you can also evaluate this based on the candidate’s answers to other questions — is it clear what they are saying? how clearly do they answer your questions? | | Entrepreneurial thinking | - Tell me about a project you've done that no one asked you to do.

  • Give an example of a situation where you implemented some improvement? And when you wanted to implement, but it didn't work out? | | Strengths | - What are your strengths according to your team / your manager? What kind of feedback have you received?
  • In what, according to your colleagues, are you the best in the team?
  • What problems do you like most? What are you less excited about at work? | | Weaknesses | - What critical feedback have you received recently?
  • Please describe your growth areas. | | Salary expectations | - What are your comp expectations? (It is incorrect, and in some countries illegal, to ask how much a person is earning at their current job. They can tell you, but we never ask about it explicitly)
  • What other perks and benefits are a must for you? | | Additional information | - When can you start the new job?
  • Where are you based currently? Where do you plan to be?
  • If it's not a secret: what other positions are you considering now? | | Willingness to accept an offer | - If you get an offer tomorrow, will you accept it?
  • What the offer should look like for you to definitely accept it?
  • If you were to rate our position on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate it? What’s missing for it to be 10 out of 10?
  • If you have three suitable job offers, how would you decide? | | Willingness to change jobs | Four forces: (here you need to ask about all these things to get the full picture)
  1. What keeps you at your current job?
  2. What pushes you away from your current job?
  3. What attracts you to the new role / company?
  4. And what makes you hesitate about the new role? What are the concerns?
  • Have you talked to your current manager about your willingness to change the job? |

• Compile the final list of questions for each interview stage, and keep them in view throughout the interview. It's crucial to ask all candidates the same questions with the same wording to ensure equality in the process.

• If the role or company pitch isn't refined, prepare it before interviews. Regardless of a specific interview's outcome, our goal is to engage the candidate and leave a positive impression of the company.

  • Here you can also use ChatGPT, but more as a critic - throw your current pitch there and ask how it could be improved.

• Send the candidate a reminder about the upcoming meeting and include useful materials. These could be links to the company's website or social networks, your LinkedIn profile, or articles about the company. It's a good practice to outline the meeting's agenda or format in this email. This helps the candidate prepare better and increases their confidence.

15 minutes before the interview starts

• Settle in, connect, and prepare. At hirehire, we have a flexible approach towards time, and it's acceptable to be slightly late for internal meetings. However, punctuality is crucial for external ones. You should be on the call right on time for the interview.
• Familiarize yourself with the candidate: review their CV and portfolio, revisit their cover letter, and previous correspondence with them, or notes from earlier interview stages. Research the companies they have previously worked at or are currently employed with. Check out their posts on LinkedIn.

During the interview

• If the candidate is late, calmly wait for at least 5 minutes, then politely ping them.