We're experiencing a very tight labour market at the moment. There are many vacancies, but too few candidates, so it's great if candidates choose your organisation for an interview for one of your vacancies! Greenjobs.nl is happy to give tips for employers on how to conduct a good interview, because not only a canidate has to make a good first impression, but so do you as an employer! And the rule with any interview: you can't make a first impression twice. Below Greenjobs.nl shares 9 tips on how you, as an employer, can leave a good impression on a candidate in a job interview and thus increase the chance of success and filling your sustainable vacancies.
9 Tips to leave a good impression during a job interview
1.🌳 Read the resume of the candidate.
Ok, this may sound like a no-brainer, but it is sometimes forgotten. An interviewer is sometimes presented with a CV 5 minutes before the interview with the announcement that your applicant will be there in 5 minutes. This leaves little time for the interviewer to read a CV and motivation. Some interviewers do not read the candidate's resume in full before the interview starts and this can come across as uninterested to the applicant. By taking the time to read the CV (and motivation) and do this, you already have to ask fewer questions in the interview and you can respond to what you have read about the candidate. This shows the candidate that you have prepared and put in the effort to get to know the candidate. Small effort, big profit.
2.🌳 Give a warm welcome!
Make sure your applicant gets a nice welcome and don't forget to ask him/her if they want a drink. Sounds logical, but unfortunately this is sometimes skipped. Is a candidate late? That's unfortunate, but first ask why he/she is late before you form a hard judgment about it. Perhaps there was a delay, traffic jam, or the office was difficult to find.
3.🌳 Show the office: Candidates really like to know where they come to work!
This gives them a good idea of the working environment and culture. So walk through the office and show them where the various departments are located, what the desks look like, where meetings are held and where lunches are held together.
4.🌳 Show some of the faces from the office!
By introducing colleagues, the candidates see what kind of team they will be working with and they already get an even clearer image of what working there would be like. Briefly introduce a number of colleagues if possible, especially the team they will be working with in the future should it end up being a match. This is super valuable and this does not have to take much effort or time!
5.🌳 Ask the candidate personal questions in the job interview.
Showing interest in the candidate will make the candidate feel more at ease. People also always like to tell something about themselves. For example, think of questions about their hobbies, or what they would like to become when they were a kid, how family and friends would describe them, etc. It breaks the ice and creates a more relaxed atmosphere in the job interview and shows that you are interested as a future employer in your employees.
6.🌳 Don't invite too many people in the interview room.
Make sure that the interview panel consists of 2 people. This prevents the candidate from feeling subject to a crossfire of questions when he/she has 3 or even 4 people sitting opposite him/her in a job interview. With a maximum of 2 people in the interview panel, it remains an open conversation with enough space for each other and to be able to listen to each other well. With more people this becomes more difficult and can ensure that the candidate does not leave the interview overwhelmed.
7.🌳 Keep an eye on the time and don't forget to leave enough space for questions.
Keep an eye on the time and make sure that there is enough time for questions from the applicant so that things that are important to him / her can also be discussed. It can be a bit frustrating for a candidate if a candidate is asked 5 minutes before time if there are any questions. Then there is almost no time to discuss the questions he / she might have prepared. This may cause the applicant to leave the interview with the impression that what he/she finds important isn't a priority and can cause him/her to leave with a less positive experience.
8.🌳 Close the conversation clearly and communicate openly about the next steps of the interview process.
A candidate wants to know when something happens during the application process. When are the decision moments and how many interviews are there? When do you provide feedback? How will the feedback be conducted? Don't let anyone wait all day for a phone call and then send an email at the end of the afternoon. So indicate what the candidate can expect and be clear about all steps in the application process.
9.🌳 Make use of Employer Branding: Really show your company.
This can be done, for example, by being more active on social media channels during the recruitment process. And make sure that your sustainable vacancy is on Greenjobs.nl, then the job seeker also knows that you are serious about sustainability. Make sure that what is mentioned on socials is also communicated in the conversations in this way and that there is 1 story about who you are. Not that the applicant has a completely different impression of you than the impression of you as an employer that you show online.
Hopefully the tips for leaving a good impression on job applicants will be of some use to you! And, do you have any sustainable vacancies open? Post these vacancies directly on www.greenjobs.nl! And who knows, the right candidate may appear sooner than you thought.
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