Recruitment Terms & Definitions
Recruitment: What is a job interview?
In recruitment, an interview is a structured conversation between a candidate and one or more representatives of the hiring organization. Its primary purpose is to assess the candidate’s qualifications, skills, experience, and fit for the position they are applying for. Interviews are a critical step in the recruitment process as they provide an opportunity for both the candidate and the hiring team to evaluate each other and determine if there is a mutual fit.
One-on-one interviews: A traditional format where a single interviewer interacts with the candidate. This allows for a more personal exchange and deep dive into the candidate’s background and qualifications.
Panel interviews: Involving multiple interviewers from different departments or levels within the organization. Panel interviews allow for a more comprehensive evaluation of the candidate from diverse perspectives.
Behavioral interviews: Focused on past behaviors and experiences to predict future performance. Candidates are asked to provide specific examples of how they have handled situations or challenges in the past, allowing interviewers to assess their skills and competencies.
Technical interviews: Common in technical fields such as engineering or IT, these interviews assess the candidate’s technical knowledge, problem-solving abilities, and proficiency with relevant tools or technologies.
Case interviews: Often used in consulting and finance, case interviews present candidates with hypothetical business scenarios or problems and evaluate their analytical thinking, problem-solving skills, and ability to communicate their solutions effectively.
Group interviews: Involving multiple candidates being interviewed simultaneously, group interviews assess how candidates interact with each other, collaborate, and communicate in a team setting.
For high-volume hourly roles, many employers replace scheduled interviews with on-the-spot hiring and walk-in interview events.
How do you recruit for an interview?
Recruiting for an interview involves several key steps to attract qualified candidates, assess their suitability for the role, and ultimately select the best fit for the position.
Here’s a structured approach to recruiting for an interview:
- Job posting: Begin by crafting a compelling job posting that accurately describes the role, responsibilities, qualifications, and desired attributes. Post the job on relevant platforms such as the company’s careers page, job boards, social media channels, and professional networking sites.
- Sourcing candidates: Actively source candidates through various channels such as job boards, professional networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn), industry-specific forums, employee referrals, and recruitment agencies. Utilize Boolean search techniques and candidate databases to identify potential candidates with the right skills and experience.
- Screening resumes: Review resumes and applications to identify candidates who meet the minimum qualifications and criteria outlined in the job posting. Look for relevant experience, skills, education, and certifications that align with the requirements of the role.
- Pre-screening interviews: Conduct pre-screening interviews, either via phone or video, to further assess candidates’ qualifications, motivations, and fit for the position. Ask targeted questions to gauge their interest in the role, availability, salary expectations, and overall suitability before inviting them for an in-person or virtual interview.
- Interview scheduling: Coordinate interview schedules with the hiring team and candidates to find mutually convenient times for all parties involved. Provide clear instructions, including the date, time, location (if in-person), and any additional details or preparations required for the interview.
- Interview preparation: Prepare interview questions and evaluation criteria based on the job requirements and desired competencies. Familiarize yourself with each candidate’s resume and application materials to tailor your questions and assess their qualifications effectively.
- Conducting interviews: Conduct interviews using a structured approach, focusing on gathering relevant information about each candidate’s skills, experience, and fit for the role. Ask behavioral questions, technical questions (if applicable), and assess their cultural fit with the organization.
- Assessment and selection: Evaluate candidates based on their performance during the interviews, as well as any additional assessments or tests conducted during the recruitment process. Consider factors such as qualifications, skills, experience, cultural fit, and alignment with the company’s values and goals.
- Follow-up and feedback: Provide timely feedback to candidates regarding their interview performance and next steps in the recruitment process. Keep candidates informed of any updates or decisions, and ensure a positive candidate experience throughout the process.
- Offer and onboarding: Extend job offers to successful candidates, negotiate terms and conditions as needed, and facilitate the onboarding process to ensure a smooth transition into the role.
What is the difference between interviewing and recruitment?
While an interview is a specific component of the recruitment process focused on evaluating candidates’ suitability for a role through structured conversations, recruitment encompasses the entire process of identifying, attracting, and selecting candidates to fill job vacancies within an organization.
What to ask in an interview?
In an interview, asking the right questions is crucial to gather relevant information about the candidate’s qualifications, skills, experience, and fit for the role and the organization. Here’s a breakdown of what to ask in an interview:
Background and experience:
Start by asking questions about the candidate’s background, including their education, work experience, and career trajectory.
Examples:
“Can you walk me through your resume and highlight your most relevant experience?”
“What motivated you to apply for this position?”
“Can you describe a project or accomplishment from your previous role that you’re particularly proud of?”
Skills and abilities:
Assess the candidate’s skills, technical expertise, and competencies relevant to the job requirements.
Examples:
“What specific skills or qualifications do you possess that make you a strong candidate for this role?”
“How do you approach problem-solving in your work?”
“Can you provide an example of a time when you had to quickly learn a new skill or technology?”
Behavioral questions:
Use behavioral questions to understand how the candidate has handled specific situations or challenges in the past, as it can provide insights into their behavior and decision-making.
Examples:
“Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult coworker or client. How did you handle the situation?”
“Describe a situation where you had to meet a tight deadline. How did you prioritize tasks and manage your time?”
“Can you share an example of a successful collaboration with a team? What was your role, and how did you contribute?”
Cultural fit:
Assess whether the candidate’s values, work style, and personality align with the company culture.
Examples:
“What type of work environment do you thrive in?”
“Can you describe your preferred work style and communication preferences?”
“How do you handle conflicts or disagreements with coworkers?”
Motivation and career goals:
Understand the candidate’s motivations for applying to the role and their long-term career aspirations.
Examples:
“What interests you most about this position and our company?”
“Where do you see yourself professionally in the next 3-5 years?”
“How does this role fit into your career goals?”
Questions for the interviewer:
Allow the candidate to ask questions to learn more about the role, the team, and the company.
Examples:
“Can you tell me more about the day-to-day responsibilities of this role?”
“What opportunities for growth and development are available within the company?”
“How would you describe the company culture and values?”
When asking questions in an interview, it’s essential to listen actively to the candidate’s responses, probe further if necessary, and evaluate their answers based on the job requirements and organizational needs. Additionally, tailoring questions to the specific role and incorporating a mix of different question types can help gather comprehensive insights into the candidate’s suitability for the position.
What are the 10 common interview questions?
- Tell me about yourself.
This open-ended question allows candidates to provide a brief overview of their background, experience, and qualifications relevant to the position.
- What are your strengths?
Candidates are asked to identify their key strengths and highlight how these strengths align with the requirements of the job.
- What are your weaknesses?
This question assesses a candidate’s self-awareness and ability to reflect on areas for improvement. It’s important for candidates to discuss weaknesses they have actively worked to overcome.
- Why do you want to work here?
Interviewers seek to understand the candidate’s motivations for applying to the company and their interest in the role and the organization’s mission and values.
- Can you provide an example of a time when you demonstrated [specific skill]?
Behavioral questions like these ask candidates to provide specific examples from their past experiences to demonstrate their skills, abilities, and problem-solving capabilities.
- Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
This question gauges a candidate’s long-term career goals and aspirations, as well as their potential fit within the company’s growth and development opportunities.
- Why should we hire you?
Candidates are prompted to articulate their unique value proposition and explain how their skills, experience, and qualifications make them the best fit for the role.
- How do you handle stress or pressure?
This question assesses a candidate’s ability to cope with challenging situations and maintain composure under pressure, which is crucial in many work environments.
- Can you describe a difficult situation or conflict you encountered at work and how you resolved it?
Behavioral questions like this evaluate a candidate’s conflict resolution skills, communication abilities, and problem-solving approach.
Do you have any questions for us?
Candidates are given the opportunity to ask questions to learn more about the role, the team, the company culture, and any other relevant aspects of the job or organization.
Job interview definition
A job interview is a structured conversation between a candidate and one or more representatives of a hiring organization, used to assess whether the candidate’s qualifications, skills, experience and working style fit a specific role. It is an evaluation carried out by conversation — and it evaluates in both directions, because the candidate is deciding about the employer at the same time.
The definition has three working parts, and each one is where interviews most often go wrong:
- Structured — there is a plan. A conversation with no fixed questions is a meeting, not an interview, and it predicts job performance considerably worse.
- Assessment — the purpose is a decision, which means information that would not change the decision does not belong in the interview.
- Specific role — a candidate is not good or bad in the abstract, only relative to a defined job. Interviews without an agreed definition of the job produce disagreement between interviewers that looks like disagreement about the person.
Interview description: what actually happens in one
In its usual shape: an introduction and a short description of the role; questions from the interviewer, most often about past experience and how the candidate handled specific situations; questions from the candidate; and a close in which the next step and its timing are stated. Somewhere in there, most interviews also include an implicit assessment neither side names — whether these people would get along on a bad day.
What is the point of an interview?
The point is to collect the evidence an application cannot carry, and to give the candidate the evidence they need to accept or decline. An application tells you what someone has done. An interview tells you how they describe it, what they think mattered about it, and how they behave when they are being evaluated.
Which means the useful questions are the ones whose answers could change the decision. A question everyone answers the same way — “are you a hard worker?” — collects no information, and a question whose bad answer you would ignore is conversation rather than assessment.
Why the job interview is important
It is the last and most expensive filter before a hiring decision, and it carries more weight than any other stage for three reasons.
- It is where judgment becomes visible. Reliability and technical skill can be checked in other ways; how someone reasons about an unfamiliar problem generally cannot.
- It decides acceptance as well as selection. For frontline roles especially, the interview is the candidate’s main evidence about what working there is like. A disorganized or dismissive interview loses offers that had already been won.
- It is the point where a mis-described job gets discovered — or does not. An interview that oversells the role produces a hire who leaves in the first month, which is the most expensive kind of turnover there is.
What to know about job interviews
Four things that change how an interview should be run, whichever side of the table you are on.
- Structure beats rapport. Asking every candidate the same questions in the same order, and scoring against criteria written down beforehand, is the single largest improvement available to most hiring processes, and it costs nothing.
- Score during, not after. Memory reorganizes itself around an overall impression within the hour, so notes and scores taken afterwards tend to justify a decision already made.
- Some questions are off limits. Age, marital and family status, pregnancy, health and disability, religion, national origin, and in many jurisdictions salary history. Ask about the requirement instead of the circumstance behind it.
- The interview is not free for the candidate. An hourly worker attending an interview is often giving up paid hours. Long processes, multiple rounds and vague timelines cost you good candidates in a way that does not show up in any report.
Related terms in this glossary: behavioral interview, competency-based interview and panel interview. For running one in practice, see how to interview someone, interview questions to ask candidates and the interview scorecard template.
Too few candidates to interview? Across 891 Facebook and Instagram campaigns, the median applicant cost $13.88.
See my cost per applicantFrequently asked questions
What is the definition of a job interview?
A structured conversation between a candidate and one or more representatives of a hiring organization, used to assess the candidate’s qualifications, skills, experience and fit for a specific role — and used by the candidate to assess the employer. It is an evaluation carried out by conversation, and it runs in both directions.
What is the point of an interview?
To collect evidence that an application cannot provide, and to let the candidate collect the same. An application shows what someone has done; an interview shows how they describe it, reason about it and behave under mild pressure. It is also the point at which a candidate decides whether to accept you, which is why a badly run interview costs offers as well as information.
Why is the job interview important?
Because it is usually the last and most expensive filter before a hiring decision, and because it is where most of the information asymmetry between the two sides is resolved. For the employer it is the only stage that tests judgment and communication directly. For the candidate it is the main evidence about what working there is like, which means it influences acceptance as much as selection.
What should you know about job interviews before running one?
Three things. Unstructured interviews predict performance poorly, so fixing the questions and their order is the cheapest improvement available. Scoring has to happen during or immediately after, because memory reorders itself within the hour. And a set of questions is off limits by law — age, marital and family status, health and disability, religion, national origin and, in many jurisdictions, salary history.
How many types of job interview are there?
The common formats are one-on-one, panel, group, phone or video screen, behavioral, situational, technical or skills-based, and the working interview or paid trial shift. Most hiring processes combine two or three — typically a short screen, then a structured conversation, then either a panel or a practical assessment.
How long should a job interview be?
Thirty to sixty minutes for most roles, and twenty to thirty for hourly and frontline positions. Longer interviews collect more conversation rather than more evidence, and for a candidate who is working a shift, a long interview is a real cost that reduces the number of good people who turn up.