First round interview for Candidate Screening: How to Guide

The first round interview is your chance to filter out the best candidates for the job position. When you successfully conduct the first round of interviews, you give a fair chance to each candidate and take the opportunity to know everything about their work abilities. To do this, you need to prepare for the interviews in advance. As a part of these preparations, you need to consider the job role you are hiring for and decide the flow of interviews for better candidate evaluation.
So, how should you prepare for the first round interview? What are the things you need to care about? How can you decide which candidates are worth shortlisting?

Keep reading to know the answers to all these questions.

The first step in preparing for the first round interview is understanding what your company needs. You also need to know how your job requirements match your company’s goal before you begin preparing for the first round of interview. There are three ways to do it.

• Go through the company’s mission statement and understand how the concerned job position will contribute to it.
• Deeply study your job description and understand the roles and responsibilities to evaluate the candidates better.
• Research what skills are needed to stand firm in the present market to evaluate candidates for those skills.

Once you do it, you are ready to prepare for the first round of interview.

With the first round interview, you get to screen the candidates who qualify for the job in one way or the other. So, why not follow a dedicated set of steps to churn out the best talent from these qualified candidates:

Finish up tasks that may disturb you during interviews

The key to successfully interviewing all the candidates is to focus on analyzing and evaluating all candidates for their responses. So, before interviewing candidates, finish all tasks that may disturb you during the interview. This will not save you from multitasking during interviews but also prevent you from shifting focus.

Take advice from experts or seniors

Learning from past experiences is the best way to improve in any domain. If you are new to interviewing, you can take expert tips from your senior recruiters. You can also ask them about their difficulties when they were new and save yourself from committing the same mistakes when conducting interviews.

Read every candidate’s resume when they arrive for the interview

A candidate may have an impressive job profile through a resume, but they may not reflect the same when you interview them face to face. The first round interview is your chance to review each candidate against their resume to know whether they are a good fit for the job. So, before you begin interviewing a shortlisted candidate, go through their resume once again and test them for the skills and experience they have mentioned on their resume.

Write a set of questions to ask in a first round interview

An essential step in preparing is to make a list of first round interview questions to ask. Before you begin writing questions, go through the job description once again. Once you do that, start writing questions to help you evaluate candidates' potential for the job. It is also crucial that you ask the same questions from all the interviewees to compare the candidates' responses.

However, you can still have specific questions for a candidate. You can ask specific first round interview questions about candidates' experience and skill level to evaluate them against their resumes.

Begin the first round interview with their introduction

You can start the first round interview by saying, tell us about yourself or tell us about your professional experience. As per the 80/20 rule, the recruiter should do 80% of listing and 20% of talking.

When you let the candidate do most of the talking, you free yourself to evaluate the candidate and their experience.

Make them comfortable with generalized questions

As a good recruiter, it is your responsibility to find the best capabilities of every candidate. To do that, it is important to make the candidate comfortable because they can only showcase their skills and experience if they are relaxed.

The best way to make your candidates comfortable is to ask some warmup questions that are general or related to their life. This will help the candidate to settle in and get ready to showcase their talent.

Check their adaptability to company culture

Checking candidates’ adaptability to company culture is important to avoid a high employee turnover rate. To check this adaptability, begin by asking questions from candidates to know how they behave or react in a certain situation to know whether they will fit in with the company’s culture.

For example, if giving constructive feedback in your company is okay, ask the applicant how they feel about constructive feedback and criticism at work. Answering such questions can help you evaluate each candidate for a cultural fit.

Ask them why they want the job

Another way to deeply analyze candidates is to ask them why they want or apply for this job. With this question, you can evaluate the candidate's career preferences and future expectations. This answer will also let you know how well the candidate knows your company and how much time he has invested in learning about it.

Focus on the body language cues

Body language speaks louder than words, and we all take cues from it subconsciously. Most employees may fake their responses to any question, but in most cases, body language cues reveal the truth. As an interviewer, studying body language and looking for signs of falsehood to evaluate candidates better is beneficial.

If you want to learn decoding body language, you can read body language books and memorize the cues that can help you detect falsehood during interviews.

Encourage candidates to ask any question they may have

As an interviewer, you should be able to answer all the questions asked by the candidates and give them a fair opportunity to ask any question about the position or company. The level of their questions can also help you know how much they have researched about the company and to what extent they think professionally. Also, remember the 80/20 rule and give understandable and precise answers to the candidates.

Get in touch with candidates’ references

Many candidates lie on their resumes and succeed in proving their efficiency during the first round interview. So, once you are done interviewing candidates, go through the list of their reference contacts from past companies can call them for feedback. It is highly recommended to call two to three contacts, as a single person may give you a biased opinion. You can get a fair review of any candidate's work history and experience when you find different references.

As a recruiter, you filter out the most unqualified candidates during the initial screening process. So, during the first round interview, you get to interview candidates with a higher chance of being capable of the job. So, plan and conduct interviews with a dedicated approach.

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