Interviewing

Process

By:
ASNAR L. ALORO, EM
 What is the interview
process?
The interview process is a multi-stage
process for hiring new employees. The
interview process typically includes the
following steps: writing a job description,
posting a job, scheduling interviews,
conducting preliminary interviews,
conducting in-person interviews, following
up with candidates, and making a hire.
An Effective Hiring Process: 4 Key
Elements
Step 1: APPLICATION
Use an automated application tool.
Build screen-out questions into this tool
and ask for the information you want.
The system will automatically determine
who passes and fails this stage and can
even have candidates automatically
schedule themselves for the next phase.
Step 2: SCREENING
The application stage provides information about
experience and technical knowledge or skills.
However, there are some interpersonal
competencies that are also important to have in a
good worker, such as work ethic and teamwork.
There are some short assessments available that
can easily screen out the candidates who do not
have acceptable levels of these competencies.
Step 3: ASSESSMENT
Candidates who have made it through the
previous stages of the hiring process have
the potential to have what it takes to
make a great employee.
Give an in-depth competency-based
assessment to these individuals to see
who rises to the top.
Step 4: INTERVIEW
 Until this point, most, if not all, of the
hiring process has happened without human
contact. Now, HR resources can spend their time
interviewing the best of the candidate pool. I can’t
tell you how many clients have told us the
number of wasted hours they have spent
interviewing clearly unqualified individuals.
 Be sure to receive training on the
use structured behavioral interviewing questions
to maximize your accuracy at this stage of the
process.
 How to Improve the Interview
Process
Throughout the interviewing process, there is much
debate by industry professionals on what are the
best ways for businesses to improve their
interview process. And by improve, we mean
attract and make better hires. One theory, is that
harder job interviews actually lead to better job
matches? It turns out, yes. Candidates who go
through a rigorous interview process often times
perceive that the company places a high value on
finding employees who are a good match for both
the position and the company culture.
Want to improve your company’s interview
process? Here are some screens you should
implement:
 The Phone Screener
Phone interviews are an easy way to screen
job seekers. They save time and money that
would otherwise be spent sifting through
hundreds of applicants, and paying someone
to screen them face-to-face. Phone
screeners allow you to vet a candidate, and
make sure they are a strong match skill-wise
before you decide to have them come in.
 The Group Panel
By meeting with a variety of people, candidates
get a comprehensive picture of the culture
and the job itself, and team members get a
strong sense of the contribution the job
seeker will make as an employee. Make sure
you prepare interviewers with job
description and resume. Also, don’t forget to
identify a panel leader, and assign roles to
each interviewer based on job function
and/or expertise.
 The Skill Test
Behavioral questions allow you to find the
best fit for each role, and help you hire
employees who can drive innovation,
productivity, customer satisfaction and
profits. Determine test objectives, e.g.
personality, values, skills, etc., and decide
how candidates will be moved forward or
eliminated based on the results.
 The Candidate
Presentation
Team members will get a sense of
contribution, skills and personality during
a job seeker’s presentation. However, you
will need to make sure to be specific
about the presentation topic to the
candidate, and also determine objectives
for evaluation of the presenter with the
team. And don’t forget to solicit feedback
via a scorecard or a post-panel debrief.
 While adding extra hoops for
candidates raises the perceived difficulty of
job interviews, it also slows down the hiring
process–which can lead to costly hiring
delays and candidates lost to the
competition. Before adding additional layers
to interviews, it’s important for employers to
assure that each new screen actually helps
identify great candidates, and doesn’t just
make interviews harder without any
offsetting benefit.
 Finding candidates who have the right
skills and who are also great culture fits with the
ability to weather adversity, manage stress, deal with
ambiguity, work constructively as part of a team, and
demonstrate resourcefulness will serve you well in
both the short and long term. Glassdoor’s recruiting
solution is a perfect tool to attract high-quality
candidates to make your interview process more
productive. After you attract high-quality candidates, it
takes a little planning ahead — choosing what
interview format you’ll use, what questions to ask,
and who will ask them — but the payoff is high.
Finding the right fit for each role will drive innovation,
productivity, customer satisfaction and profits.
The Stages of the Job Interview
Though each interview is unique, many seem to follow these 5
stages:
 1. INTRODUCTIONS
This is your opportunity to make a great first impression.
Research indicates that interviewers make tentative
evaluations of candidates in the first two to four minutes so
don't overlook this stage of the interview. Remember first
impressions are often lasting impressions! Remember that no
matter who you are meeting, whether it's the Human
Resources Representative or your future boss, you should
give a firm handshake, smile and introduce yourself: S-H-E
(Smile-Handshake-Eye contact)
◦ “Hello I’m Eunice Davenport and I'm very pleased to meet you
Ms. Smith.”
◦ You may jot down the name/title of those you meet
◦ It’s appropriate to stand when you are being introduced
 2. SMALL TALK
This stage is aimed at developing rapport. It
usually consists of casual conversation to put
everyone at ease and develops an easy
transition to the next stage of the interview.
Typical small talk topics include: the weather,
the ease of your commute or positive
comments about the demographic location
or office building and/or office space. Keep
small talk positive-even if you had a negative
experience. It can only go up from here!
 3. INFORMATION GATHERING
This is the part of the interview where you will be expected to give
information about your background and experience and use it to
sell yourself.You may include your Elevator Pitch.Your goal is to
emphasize your fit and show how you can help meet the company’s
mission/goals. Provide details from your resume to build your case
as a good fit. Cover information you believe is important, even if
the interviewer doesn’t ask you.
Share your success stories (using the STAR Method) to be sure the
employer gets a strong sense of who you are and what you are
capable of accomplishing.The exchange of information is aimed at
covering three main areas:
1) determining who you are,
2) if you can do the job and
3) if you will you “fit” in. Usually the exchange of
information takes about 20 to 30 minutes.
 4. ASKING QUESTIONS
Once the interviewer feels they have gathered
the necessary information to make a hiring
decision they will usually end by asking “Do
you have any questions?” Always have
questions prepared. This is your opportunity
to clarify any information that might not
have been clear and demonstrate your
knowledge of and interest in the company.
See upcoming section of Questions.
 5. CLOSING THE INTERVIEW AND
FOLLOWING UP
Be aware of clues that the interview is over. Leave on a positive note:
Make a final and enthusiastic statement about your interest in the
position and the company.
Ask for a business card so that you have all the information needed in
order to follow up with a thank you letter. Find out any instructions
concerning the next steps or when you might expect to hear from
the employer again. Thank your interviewer for their time, smile
and shake their hand firmly. Leave the organization promptly after
the interview.
Now that you have some general information about interviews, it is
important to understand your feelings about interviews to help you
overcome any issues or concerns you may have, and let your
confidence shine through! It is normal to be nervous before and
during an interview, but with enough practice-and thorough
preparationthe experience will become natural over time.
POLITICAL and
COMMUNITY
LEADERSHIP
Political Leadership
 Political leadership is a
concept central to
understanding political processes and
outcomes, yet its definition is elusive.
Many disciplines have contributed to the
study of leadership,
including political theory, history,
psychology and management studies.
 Here we define political leaders as:
◦ i) democratically elected
◦ ii) representatives
◦ iii) vulnerable to deselection
◦ iv) operate within, as well as influence a constitutional
and legal framework. Their source of authority
◦ v) mandate: ‘permission to govern according to
declared policies, regarded as officially granted by an
electorate . . . upon the decisive outcome of an
election’ (Chambers dictionary, 1993)
◦ vi) set out in law, and broader than organizational or
union forms of membership, since it extends to all
citizens with voting rights, in a defined constituency.
 Political leadership involves
relationships of interdependence between
leaders, the organization(s) and the
context, separately defining ‘leader’ and
‘context’ can be limiting. This suggested in
different theories.
Four kinds of leadership theory:
 trait approaches,
 contingency approaches,
 situational approaches and
 constitutive approaches.
Trait approaches
 Trait approaches are
‘essentialist’ in terms of the leader but
‘non-essentialist’ in terms of context: ‘a
leader is a leader under any
circumstances’.
 Much leadership research
views leaders as individuals with a
particular set of traits or abilities, or sees
leadership as the exercise of particularly
effective sets of behaviours.
Contingency approaches
 Contingency approaches are
essentialist in terms of the leader and the
context: ‘both the essence of the individual
and the context are knowable and critical’.
 The most influential contingency
model is by Fiedler (1967), which emphasizes
leadership style in combination with the
relevant features of a given situation. This
suggests that performance is a function of
leaders’ style and some key features of the
context (leader–follower relations, task
structure, position power).
 Situational approaches
 Situational approaches are essentialist in
terms of the context, but not in terms of the leader:
‘certain contexts demand certain kinds of leadership – so
we do need to be very clear about where we are’.
 Situational approaches, like contingency
approaches, acknowledge the importance of context and
thus offer advantages over trait accounts. However, they
overlook the ways in which leader and context may be
interdependent. This is a limitation because political
leaders are concerned with developing far-reaching
policies that govern the ‘authorizing environment’ (Moore,
1995) within which organizations and institutions operate.
This makes it harder to treat ‘context’ for political leaders
as a given (Leach et al., 2005). Managerial leaders typically
promote the interests of an organization, or less typically,
a coalition of organizations with shared interests.
 Constitutive approaches
 constitutive approaches, are nonessentialist in
terms of the leader and the context: the meaning of
context and leader are both contested, ‘leadership must still
be perceived as “appropriate’’, but what that means is an
interpretive issue’.
 the leader and the context (in terms of work
group) are defined relationally (Leach et al., 2005). One of the
potential benefits of a constitutive approach is that it allows
space to explore the ways in which leadership is socially
constructed (Grint, 2000, 2005; Heifetz, 1994). This opens
opportunities for alternative methodological paradigms, such
as ethnography, and methods such as discourse or narrative
analyses (Putnam & Fairhurst, 2001). A limitation is that
exclusive focus on constitutive accounts makes it harder to
pursue prevailing nomothetic paradigms based on quantitative
methods.
Fundamental Assumptions
 People act out of self-interest and
personal pursuit of power, wealth, and influence
 Careerism-focused on their own
needs
 Scarcity of resources-zero sum
game
 Intensifying competition outside and
complexity inside companies call for increased
specialization
 Organizational units are embedded
with Localitis
Political Leadership
Central tenets
 Move forward in small
incremental steps
 Orchestrate change from
behind the scenes
 Selective use of shared
information
Setting and Communicating Goals
 Keep your goals flexible,
sometimes vague
 Broad goals minimizes the
likelihood that opposition will mobilize
 Involve as many as possible to
maximize creativity and innovation
 Communicate the strategy
over time
Formal Systems and Structures
 Value loyalty in key positions
 Staffs can be a powerful
resource to review and evaluate results
for “contamination”
 Tilt towards greater
dependency on staff assessment
 Community Leader
 Designation often by secondary
sources for a person who is perceived to
represent a community
Community Leadership
 Is a specific form of the general
concept of leadership.
 Frquently based in place and so is
local, although it can also represent a
community of common interest, purpose, or
practice.
Community Leadership
Community leaders are not
necessarily elected to their positions,
and usually have no legal powers, but
they acting as a point of liaison between
that community and authorities.
Building Healthy Communities
Community leadership together
with knowledge and skills, voluntering,
networks and partnership have been
identified as indicator for stronger
communities and civil society.
Building Healthy Communities
Effective community leadership is
an important contributor to local social
development.
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Thank You!!!!!!