Knowing What’s Needed to Crush Your Job Interview
By Madelyn Greenwood, senior recruiter
Madelyn Greenwood is a senior recruiter at InnoSource. She helps clients find senior level candidates for a wide array of roles that include customer service, marketing, finance, project management and user experience. In this article, Madelyn shares what helps a candidate stand out among the rest.
- Commitment
One of the key attributes InnoSource recruiters look for is a candidate’s commitment, and the amount of time spent in previous roles on a resume. Studies show that millennials and Gen-Z’ers are job hopping much more frequently than the generations that precede them. The job of recruiters is not only to help their client find qualified candidates but find individuals who will be devoted to the role for at least a few years. When individuals leave a job after a short period, it can prove costly to the hiring company, and can be a strike to the reputation of the recruiting firm.
Not all job hopping is equal. In the past several years, many companies have executed layoffs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in the economy. In these cases, most employees didn’t have a choice in their employment status and these situations won’t be held against them. Recruiters do all they can to learn the reasons for the changes in employment to be sure they aren’t giving their clients candidates who have a tendency to leave roles quickly.
- Experience
Every client of InnoSource provides their desired candidate criteria, including experience. The pre-screening process helps recruiters determine if the candidate fits the desired experience level on paper, but the recruiter then takes a deeper dive. Not all experience is the same, so in the interview process, recruiters work to understand the candidate’s experience at a more granular level. Recruiters want to know types of project experience and outcomes, and software and systems used, for example. Experience is much more than time spent in the workforce, so recruiters are trained to focus on the details to determine if that experience is relevant to the role for which they are recruiting.
- Interpersonal Skills
The way people communicate has changed drastically over the past few years. Some recruiters have noticed that interpersonal skills among candidates aren’t quite as strong as they may have been years ago, due in part to the rise of digital channels and short-hand communication. There are some jobs that can be completed without much human interaction, but for those that require interpersonal skills, recruiters want to make sure they’re finding companies a good fit.
Even though many of the interviews that recruiters complete are virtual, they still want to see if the candidate is trying to put out a good first impression. Recruiters first want to be sure that the candidate is showing up to the interview on time. They want to see if the candidate is dressing professionally, even if the interview is virtual. They also want to be sure the candidate is engaged and enthusiastic, and not looking at their phone during the conversation. A recruiter also looks to see if the candidate has questions about the job prepared. How a person presents themselves in an interview often translates to how they present themselves in a job, so recruiters work hard to examine every aspect of the interview process, including the interpersonal skills.
- Desires
Recruiters not only want to know what a candidate brings to the table now, but they also want to gauge what a candidate desires for their future. Again, the role of the recruiter is to find a good long-term fit for their client, so they want to be sure the candidate also sees themselves in the same way. If the candidate’s aspirations don’t match what the recruiter is recruiting for, then they can determine that the candidate might not be a good fit. Most candidates want to grow and continually build upon their career, recruiters and companies know that, but does the candidate see themselves growing within the company they are recruited for? Recruiters want to find candidates for which the answer is “yes.”