Interview Best Practices: First impressions to hire GREAT talent

First Impressions – are you interviewing with a GREAT employer

I have focused most of the thoughts in this blog on interview best practices for job seekers and advice to get offers of employment, but I also want to encourage and develop employers to better understand how they can recruit, hire and retain top talent. Truth be told, there is not a surplus of GREAT manager candidates in our industry and we are starting to see separation from those GREAT employers who are intentional about selecting GREAT managers and those that will settle for the GOOD managers. The outcomes for the employers who can find, recruit , hire and retain those GREAT managers is obvious. These employers are becoming the leaders in the industry while others are just sustaining.

While working with many employers, one development opportunity that we see as integral for the recruitment of GREAT Managers is developing interview best practices. One interview best practice for employers is to be intentional about creating a great first impression for candidates. It is said that a hiring decision is usually made in the first 5 minutes of an interview and I believe the same goes for top talent decided if an employer is GREAT. If a hiring manager is able to well develop rapport within the first part of the interview process, the candidate is much more likely to want to work for that employer. The GREAT employers we work with get this and go to great lengths to ensure their professionalism, courtesy and communication is impeccable from the start. We are in the people business and those employers that understand how to treat people to make them really love their brand are gaining a great competitive advantage, maximizing the opportunity to make GREAT hires and increase profitability through best leveraging their human capital. KUDOS to our clients for being GREAT employers!

If you are an employer, a hiring manager or aspire to be one, please chime in and let us know how you set the stage to recruit and hire GREAT talent. We want to all learn from each other’s interview best practices to redefine and develop on how to best handle hiring trends.