How can we improve the candidate’s interview skills?


Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 1:07pm Thursday 17 December 2009

Over the past month, I have been trying out a new product that was released to the Australian marketplace called Interview Gold. The product takes a unique approach to interview preparation which combines a fast track interview skills course with video practice interviews and interactive mock interviews.

In my position, I get to play with a lot of new products (thanks everyone). The reason for the review of Interview Gold is because it identifies and improves an often overlooked part of the recruitment process - preparing the candidate for an interview.

We all know how important the candidate-client interview is, and if the candidate performs poorly, the chances are they will fail and not get the role. It is often a very time consuming and often frustrating part on both sides to prepare the candidate for an interview. Am I giving the candidate the right advice? Are they listening?

As recruiters, career coaches, trainers, etc we can only do so much in the time we have available we can now outsource this time consuming training to someone else. The product enables candidates to complete job-specific interview training online and recruitment consultants to review the performance of their candidates to ensure they are ready for interview. It ensures candidates perform at their best at interview, leading to higher placement rates.

By using the system, candidates can know what to expect, the questions they will ask and what to say and do to win the job offer. Kate Southam, editor at CareerOne also wrote a review of the product last month focusing on the candidate front end.

From my point of view and expertise in the industry, I wanted to look at it from the recruiter’s side. Would using the product increase the consultant’s productivity? Obviously yes, but is the consultants workload increased?

All the recruiter needs to do is log into the system and add the candidate’s details - first name, last name and email address. An email with login details is automatically generated and sent to the candidate for them to step through the training program. The recruiter can follow up on the candidate’s progress through the training program and provide feedback on the mock interview questions. You can then record (copy/paste) the results of the training session back into the recruitment database.

Now you can have some peace of mind that the candidate is more prepared for the interview than before.