3 steps to create your own interview guide

Yesterday, I spoke about competency-based interviews and how, when you conduct a competency-based interview, you must develop an interview guide which guides you about how you will conduct the interview.

Today, I’m going to give you three pointers on how to create your interview guide.

1.    Define the job requirements by determining the behaviours, knowledge and motivations important for success in the job, i.e. sales ability, analytical ability.

2.    Design the recruitment and selection process by documenting the number and type of selection elements you’re going to use, for example:

-    Tests;
-    Interviews;
-    Simulations;
-    References;
-    The number of interviewers and interviews;
-    The time allocated for each interview; and
-    The decision points to screen out or move forward.

3.    Create the interview guide using planned behavioural questions based on the behaviours defined in the job requirement.  Planned behavioural questions include three parts:

-    The scenario or situation: “In your position at XYZ Company  .....”;

-    The behavioural action is the open-ended interrogative question representing the behavioural data seeking portion. Basic fact-finding questions begin with words like when, where, what, who, how often, how much, “ tell me about a time when ....? “.; and

-    The outcome focus completes the competency question and seeks a specific example of a situation, action or result that relates to the behavioural definition.

A structured and planned behavioural question could go like this: “Tell me about the last change or improvement you initiated in your job at ....”? From this, you will be able to determine the candidate's initiative based on the answer and the outcome of his previous actions.