So, you need to interview someone, and you want to do a good job. Maybe it’s your first time hiring people, or maybe you’ve been doing it for a while with less than stellar results. Maybe you’ve had your own terrible interviewers and want to make sure you don’t inflict that on someone else — or inflict bad hires on your colleagues. Here’s your primer on how to be a good interviewer.
1. Don’t wing it. A startling number of interviewers don’t prepare much for interviews. They might read a candidate’s résumé for the first time a few minutes before the interview, and they don’t put much time into figuring out what to screen for and how to do that. Instead, they rely on informal, unstructured conversations, which lead them to make hires based more on gut feeling than on any kind of rigorous assessment.
To interview well, you’ll need to put real thought into what you’re looking for in a candidate and how you’ll suss it out.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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One Reply to “How to Be a Good Interviewer By Alison Green”
Very informative and It was an awesome post. I love reading your fantastic content. Thanks for sharing it with us. We are so greatful to your sharing.
Very informative and It was an awesome post. I love reading your fantastic content. Thanks for sharing it with us. We are so greatful to your sharing.