Member Article

Businesses Must Implement Better Interview Training Says Midlands HR Specialists

Midlands based HR and Employment Law firm, Cream HR, has found that ineffective and sometimes discriminatory job interviews are mostly a result of little or no interview training for business managers.

A recent survey of over 1,000 managers in the UK has found that four out of five did not know it was illegal to ask a candidate whether they are planning to go on maternity or paternity leave. Costly mistakes such as this could result in a nasty law suit for a company, which could be prevented with some simple interview training sessions. Anthony Sutton, MD of Cream HR, comments: “It is a shocking but true fact that discrimination is still very prevalent in our working lives. In considering the importance and relevance of this, business owners and executives need to realise that their business could be at serious financial risk if it has been found to have discriminated against someone – whether that is an existing employee or in an interview situation. The penalties can be huge.” According to research carried out this year by job site CV Library, 73 per cent of nearly 2,000 professionals surveyed in the UK have been asked an inappropriate or illegal question during a job interview. In the wake of the ‘Me Too’ movement and a shift towards greater equality and inclusion within the workplace, it has never been more important to interview candidates in a positive, fair and non-discriminatory manner. Anthony continued: “Businesses should recognise that interviewing candidates for a job is about finding the best and most suitable person for the position and for the organisation. Recruiting the best person has nothing to do with their age, sex, sexuality, disability etc. and the questions asked should reflect that. Asking the right questions, in the right way, is vital for a successful recruitment process. “The key to effective interviewing is to find out about what the candidate did in specific roles or at specific times during their life. Start with their earliest job and ask the same question for each role: What were you hired for? What were your greatest achievements? What did you struggle with? Why did you move on? How did your boss react to you moving on?

“These simple questions will provide you with a great opportunity to really probe into a candidate’s answers. If their greatest achievement was nothing to do with what they were hired for then we need to ask why. It’s also good to explore why an interviewee picked a specific achievement - what made it so special? How did it make them feel? How did their boss/colleagues react?” “Interviewing may seem simple, but it is easy to make costly mistakes. Sticking to characteristics and past experiences of a person, concentrating on their achievements and assessing how they react in certain situations is always considered the best way to gauge whether they will be asset to a business.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Amy Gallacher .