Current Fashions In Interviews

I have commented before about how there are fashions in interviews:
http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/in-interviews-say-as-little-as-possible.html
http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/interviews-you-are-weakest-link-goodbye.html and my recommendations for running interviews effectively: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/rooksmoors-guide-to-conducting-job.html  Looking back over these old postings has reminded me of how much fashions in interviewing have changed over the past 3 years. Who changes these fashions and where you can find out about them, remains a mystery to me. I guess you need to subscribe to some human resources journal to find out what is now required. The woman who lived in my house used to be sent the latest style of CV by her sister who appears to have had a supplier of these. I wonder why there are so many changes so frequently. To some degree I guess it is to keep human resources people in work or to make sifting out applicants easier. As yet I have to encounter a human resources department which is not over-staffed or one that is busy. Given that entire departments at two companies I have worked for take a whole day off not leaving even one person to answer the phones and that at least one had enough time to specifically write to the Department of Work and Pensions to try to get my benefits stopped, they clearly have a lot of time on their hands.

Certainly one thing they do not do is communicate what they have changed to other departments. The most disheartening thing, when you have followed every instruction to the letter to be told by the interviewers ‘well that’s not how we used to do it’ and ‘you must have got it wrong’. You are blamed for them not being updated that now applications come on this form or are sent to this person. I know blame-shifting is second nature these days, but to blame the poor applicant for a lack of communication within your company is terribly mean spirited.

Thus, having applied for 39 jobs since the start of June and having attended 14 interviews, with 2 more scheduled, I thought I would alert you to new trends in recruitment for the Autumn 2012 employment season in case you are out there trying to get a job.

The first thing is the deterioration of online application systems. About 90% of the jobs I apply for, I apply through an online system. This means I have to set up an account with them. I must be on fifty different companies systems now even if I have just applied for one job. In some cases this can be an advantage as I do not have to type in how many ‘O’ levels I got in 1983 again and again. I am always astounded how much information they want which is utterly irrelevant to the job. Does it really matter if I got an ‘A’ or a ‘B’ for O Level Chemistry in 1983? I am not applying to be a chemist. I suppose it helps with the filtering. I guess this is the reason why you have to list what school you attended and where, so they can simply bin those who did not go to Eton or one of its equivalents.

The problem is that these systems are unstable. They can lose everything you have written in an instant. They can suddenly deny you access to certain pages. Contacting the company whose website you are applying through is useless. They only see it from their side and so do not see the buttons missing for people coming from the public side. I had to abandon one application because there was no way I could register for an account, only people who already registered could get in. I emailed the company which sent me a link back to the page which was missing the registration button, telling me it was there. Again I am portrayed as the stupid one. Of course, a lot of companies simply buy in these systems without checking if they work or are suitable. I have mentioned before how you get 2000 characters to respond to 25 job requirements, working out at something like only 380 words. For one company I could not fit my response in the box they provided and asked what the character limit was for it and they said they did not know. Conversely, I have been given 5000 characters to write my nine character national insurance number into and 2000 characters to write ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the question about whether I had a right to work in the UK. Some employees are aware how bad their systems are to the extent that I have now learnt their names and simply email my application to them rather than trying to wrestle with the system. 

One element which has certainly been around for the last five years if not longer is the fact that if you cannot match every single one of the characteristics listed on the job specification, do not bother applying for the job.  Often if you say you have not used Software Package X but are very experienced in Software Package Y, which in my sector tends to be far more up-to-date than X, your application is often rejected even before it is seen by a human.  The trouble with this matching every requirement, typically 20-30, is that you can never progress.  You are only interviewed for jobs that you have entirely done before.  There is no ability to step up a level.  This is contrary to the long standing trend in the UK going back probably two centuries, that you moved job to climb to a higher position, something in contrast to Japan for example.  To progress you must pay to go on training courses and get certification yourself and in your own time, without support from your company even if they benefit from you doing this.  Being unemployed I do have the time but not the money to go on such training.  As a consequence my career having peaked in 2010 is now on a downward trajectory as some of the skills I have become obsolete, I cannot apply for as wide a range of jobs as I could have done two years ago.  People tell you that it is your job that becomes redundant not you as a person, but actually in the UK today, that is not the case.

Both salaries and leave are falling.  Jobs I held back in 2005 are now paying £5,000 per year less now than then, despite the sharp rise in the cost of living since then; petrol is twice the price per litre that it was in 2005.  Interestingly pay rates for the same jobs at different companies have now become incredibly varied.  I have seen everything from £27,000 to £44,000 per year for an identical post in different companies.  The most leave I have ever had in a job was 38 days and the average has been 33, but many jobs are now offering only 20 days.  The number of job specifications which state 'must be flexible as to hours' which in its poorly phrased way suggests that you will be expected often to come in early and work late or at weekends.  Clearly despite falling salaries companies want to squeeze more work out of each worker.  As discussed below, this is aided by new technologies which mean you are expected never to be free of the office.  The other thing is 'must be able to work under pressure and to tight deadlines'.  To me, any office especially one which is not associated with the media, where there is constant pressure and tight deadlines is a highly disorganised and inefficient office.  In addition, this requirement contradicts the many others about you being able to organise well, manage your time and prioritise effectively.  Consequently it suggests that the company expects bosses to suddenly spring work on you and expect you to do it for them.  I suppose that with so many attitudes in the UK returning to the 1950s we should not be surprised at this.  However, it hardly suggests working practices that are going to make British industry competitive.  The 1950s were the time when efficiency in British business slid fastest despite the growing prosperity not only in Britain but across Europe and in Japan and North America.

The length of time vacancies are advertised has been reduced with some being taken down within a few days of being advertised.  I imagine that is to reduce the number of applicants.  On a number of occasions jobs I have applied for have got back to me to say that the decision has been delayed by some weeks or the interview arranged for a date two months into the future.  Also vacancies have disappeared usually because the funding has been withdrawn.  I have found that there is absolutely no point in asking about these vacancies and certainly not to point out that you spent a lot of time applying for the post.  In my field it generally takes 8 hours and 5000 words to apply for a position.  The Job Centre presses you to chase up employers you have not heard from.  However, these vacancies which ultimately never have an interview and effectively, disappear, are treated by companies as a particular case.  Often their disappearance is the result of funding changes or difficulties or changes in policy so to respond to queries about the vacancies going is embarrassing to companies to the extent that they can be hostile to queries about them. This is added to the fact that they know they have wasted money in advertising the post and even beginning to analyse applications.  I have learnt it is better to fob off the Job Centre with an excuse which is probably close to what actually happened even if the company would not say it, e.g. that the funding for the post was reallocated and they decided not proceed with the vacancy and hope that the Job Centre staff do not insist on written proof of that supposition.

The other thing that has been reduced is the length of time in which you are notified of an interview.  Back in 2009 when I was invited to an interview 2 days later I was quite surprised but this is now the norm.  I rarely get even a week's notice.  The shortest notification was at 15.15 for an interview at 14.30 the following day, so less than 24 hours.  What made it worse was that the email giving me this information did not actually arrive in my In-box until 22.30, leading to me going to bed immediately.  Fortunately it turned out that the administrator has her work emails going to her smartphone day and night and she texted me back that night to say she had received my message.  I have not been able to afford a smartphone, but it is clear employers are now expecting you to be accessible via email even well outside office hours.  The thing about such short notice of interviews is that it discriminates against anyone with caring commitments.  In addition, it discriminates against people already in a job but looking to move.  Employers still prefer to employ someone currently working rather than someone unemployed, yet there is no way that you can book leave for the following day.  Thus, this approach clearly contradicts the actual attitudes of the companies with no real benefit in my view and in fact preventing many good candidates from attending the interview.

One thing which has certainly appeared in the past year is the need to prove your identity when you arrive at an interview.  The UK has stepped away from identity cards more than once in recent years, but these days to get a job, because of the immigration regulations, you have to constantly prove your identity.  All the markings on my passport have worn off as I have had to use it so often.  I cannot remember when I last travelled abroad, perhaps four years ago, so effectively my passport is no longer used for foreign travel, it is simply my UK identity card.  Mine has expired but I lack the funds to renew it and do not know anyone suitable to sign the photographs.  As yet I have not been challenged for using an out-of-date passport, but I know soon someone will say that they cannot be certain whether I am still British and will bar me from a job on that basis.  I do not know how anyone can claim that immigrants are taking British jobs because the nationality proof requirements are so stringent even if you want to attend an interview let alone actually get the job.  Of course, bigots exclaim loudest from positions of ignorance.

There are some interview trends that I am happy to see have apparently died.  From about 2003 up until last year 95% of the interviews I attended, somewhere around 80, insisted that you did a PowerPoint presentation.  Now, I became very adept at these.  Though some people complained my slides were too plain and lacked decoration, most welcomed their clarity.  The key problem was that in so many cases the interview panel could not operate the equipment.  On a number of occasions the interview was postponed by 1 hour whilst the technical staff were fetched.  On other occasions, I simply had to hold up print-outs of the slides I had produced.  This year interviewers have turned right around and say there will be no facilities for such presentations and you should not bring them.  The new fashion is 'initiating a discussion' on a particular theme.  I quite enjoy this approach.  The key difficulty is not being able to gauge how long to speak for.  This is the same with the responses to questions, you want to appear knowledgeable but not exceed the time the questioner has in their head for what is an appropriate answer.  The tolerated duration varies between the different members of the panel and bears no relevance to the length or complexity of the question asked nor to whether one question was asked or four were asked wrapped up to appear as a single question.

Another trend that I am glad to have seen the death of, is the requirement to bring along a copy of every single qualification you have ever received.  This never seemed to have any point for me as you cannot get 'A' Levels unless you have done GCSEs (or if you are as old as me, 'O' Levels) and you cannot get a degree unless you have 'A' Levels or some equivalent.  So each level effectively renders the previous one obsolete.  In the case of specific skills, such as have you studied French to 'A' Level when you did a degree in Financial Management is a fair thing to ask if appropriate for the job, but up until last year it was every single scrap of paper accumulated since I was aged 13.  Now about 20% of the interviews I have attended ask for qualification certificates and in every case only the highest.  However, you do still get asked about your competency in English, in fact, this is asked more than before, I think as adjunct to the immigration scrutiny.  I suppose also given how poor spelling and grammar is among young people today it is a fair point even for those with a degree, but to someone of my age it seems a bit silly.

A less common fashion is a revival of what I call the 'civil service' style.  I have had tens of appalling interviews in my career but one that sticks out in my mind was with what was then the Department of Employment in 1993 for a job in a Job Centre.  The lead interviewer held up a piece of paper in front of her face and simply read in a very mechanical tone a list of questions that all started with 'give us an example of ...'  I suppose you could say it was a very fair process, it was pretty much like being interviewed by a computer.  Two interviews I have had recently have used this style.  They have a list of 'competencies' and expect you to give an example which shows that you can do all of them.  They do this in addition to a normal interview.  Now, such requirements are standard on job specifications but they are not often checked in this mechanical way.  A challenge is that they often include a range of different aspects.  The classic one which I see on about 80% of job specifications is 'must be a team worker but also be able to work on your own initiative'.  Now this is one requirement yet responding to it you have to show skills that are in fact in the opposite direction.  Unsurprisingly the interviews at such companies using this competency approach constantly over-run as it is difficult to get through 20 competencies, a typical number in 30 minutes.  The last one I attended started 45 minutes late and rather than the 30 minutes I had been assigned mine ran to 45 minutes, adding a further 15 minutes to the delay for the next candidate.  Many interview panels simply pick a duration at random and do not make any effort to judge whether the number of questions and reasonable answers to these will fit into the time they have assigned.  It happens both ways.  At an interview due to last 1 hour we found it was all over after 40 minutes with all the questions thoroughly answered.

Two interviews on the same day with different panels is a fashion which, whilst not common, still seems to be around.  I have no real problem with this approach though often you find yourself repeating things to the second panel you said just moments before to the first panel.  The first panel is often in a rush as they are conscious of over-running, first because in two-panel interviews each session is shorter than a standard single panel interview and second because they are conscious that any delay at their end with impact on the scheduling for the second panel.

In my sector, something which has gone through a big revival is the activity test.  Sometimes these are cognitive analysis exercises.  However, they are generally purchased from generic business suppliers and in my position are not always suited to the jobs I do, particularly in the case of the level of proof which is required to make a judgement.  Most, however, consist of summarising a document or producing a policy briefing based on it.  Generally these are fine, though you need to learn to move fast to set up a strange computer to how you do things, especially if you are left-handed.  Some companies give you all the company documentation relevant to the task as if you had time to read it.  These are internal handbooks and guidelines not accessible outside the company.  Thus, whenever I am given so much documentation which could not be processed in the 30 minutes always assigned for the task, I know an internal candidate is favoured or in fact, as with so many aspects of interviewing, the panel have thought it a good idea to set a test but have not thought through how long it will take or what in fact it is supposed to be demonstrating.

I must say that employers are getting better at letting you know if you have not got the job.  A couple of years ago you simply heard nothing, but these days they send an email, sometimes telephone and in one case actually sent me a rejection letter.  I think they have realised that in a time of high unemployment, they get people ringing and ringing to find out what has happened, something we are strongly encouraged to do by the Job Centre.  Though they loath having to send out rejection messages, companies have learnt that it ultimately saves time fielding calls from concerned applicants.  Only two of the 14 companies have offered feedback on my interviews.  About a third have either ignored requests for it or have refused to give it citing confidentiality of the interview process.  Some of the feedback is useless, wheeling out the set phrase 'another candidate better matched the job description' which suggests they cannot really articulate what I did right or wrong because that judgement could easily have been made from the application form alone.  The number of companies paying interview expenses has fallen to about 1 in 3.  The rates have remained the same which means you are worse off with rising petrol prices.  The level varies quite considerably.  Having attended interviews at companies which lie less than 7 Km apart I received £35 to drive to one but £90 to drive to the other.  Of course, even with the rise in petrol costs, driving can be up to four times cheaper than travelling by train to the interview and as companies often do not pay beyond the main journey you are often stuck walking kilometres from the station or having to ride the back streets and housing estates on a local bus, assuming you can find the right one.

My concern in all of this is that British companies have still not found interview methods which provide them with the staff they actually need rather than what they think they need.  I am hearing of too many companies not being able to fill vacancies which in a time of high unemployment is very strange.  It seems to come from them setting job specifications that cover so many different skills that you need an individual who has had three or four different careers to be able to fulfil them.  In addition, the interview process is often so poor that the company does not know whether they have got a suitable person or not so err on the side of caution.  They have no willingness, however, to train or develop staff, so when they cannot find the people with 100% of the skills they want down to a very specific level, they would rather go without.  This leaves more work to fall on the existing staff increasing inefficiency.   You can do well with someone who has 90% or even 80% of the skills and they will like being able to expand into new areas rather than feeling they are trapped in a job which is identical to all the ones they have done before.  Companies also really need to reflect on what they actually need the person to do in the job rather than pile up a whole list of dream requirements that apparently make the company seem dynamic but actually make it appear poorly run.  They also need to give people time to apply for jobs and to arrange to attend interviews.  By using a 'just in time' approach to interviewing they actually exclude a lot of candidates who in fact may be the best they would get.  As with so much in British business, we need to move away from 'seems' being the driver for so much behaviour to approaches based on the actuality.

The Headache of Online Applications

As regular readers know, I have recently been applying for jobs of all kinds in the hope that I can find work before I run out of money and my house is repossessed which I calculate will happen by December.  Compared to last year when I applied for 38 jobs, had 16 interviews and only received feedback from 3. In some ways the situation this year has got both better and worse.  Out of 35 applications I have had 7 interviews, and another due next week, all but 2 of the sets of interviewers this year have provided feedback.  The feedback was sometimes quite expected, i.e. they had a candidate already working for them who knows their business better than me and at other times it has been quite offensive, accusing me of having lied on my application form.  It does seem that my interview skills needed polishing and so I was lucky being unemployed that a local training centre gave me a free two-hour session.

Of course, in contrast to the past, interviewing skills are not the only ones you need to get a job.  Once you would simply send in a CV or complete an application form then hope to be called for an interview.  Then things moved from paper-based applications to electronic ones.  Saying that, in interviews Powerpoint seems to have passed its peak of the early to mid-2000s and people are now wanting presentations done by you simply speaking or using handouts at most.  The step from paper-based to electronic application forms was very much in my favour.  For some reason the way I wrote seemed to be either juvenile or threatening and it meant that I only got 1 interview for every 25 applications I put in.  Being able to complete the application in Word which generally came in, in the early 2000s for the kind of employers I apply to, meant my hit rate rocketed to 1 interview per 3-5 applications even though I was writing basically the same thing.  Now, of course, we have gone a further stage.  Rather than simply emailing your completed application, now you have to log on to the company's human resources website and complete the whole application online.

Application forms were not always best designed and sometimes you were desperately seeking the right place to put in good information about you.  Like all recruitment processes, they seemed obsessed with details that had no relevance for the job you are applying for.  Having completed my O Levels now more than 25 years ago, I do not really seem what impact whether I got a B or a C in Physics really has on my current skills and knowledge.  Furthermore, what significance is the date I was awarded that O Level or what the address of my school was back in the early 1980s?  Yet, time after time whether on paper or electronic forms I have to give all of this in detail.  Some take it even further and I had a ridiculous situation of being in an interview last year with a man sitting in the corner of the room comparing photocopies of my faded, typed certificates from the 1980s against all the originals.  I did not even get the job but the company insisted on keeping the photocopies for a year!  Why?  I have no idea.  To me it seems that many companies have little idea what they want out of their recruitment processes and so end up putting in these rituals as if they had some significance.

Now, I have commented on poor interviewing before, and today need to focus on the difficulties of online applications.  I am good at the applications, so much so that people are startled (sometimes angry) at how poor I appear in real life, hence them accusing me of lying on the forms.  I never bother to lie, there is no point: given how much trouble I get into writing the truth imagine the risks I would run lying.  However, interestingly, at two interviews in the past year I have been told that I am the only candidate to have completed the application form correctly.  This means that everyone else I have been up against has failed to do it right.  The forms may be repetitive and restrictive but they are generally not at all difficult to get your head round; the problems come from other sources, as I explore below.  Weirdly it seems I could still get interviews if I did my applications less well and it would help reduce the level of disappointment interviewers get when they question me!

The first issue that you encounter when trying to do an online application is the same as you encounter when trying to buy or pay for anything online, you have to log on.  For most of us these means setting up a new account.  However, having been unemployed so much recently, and applying for jobs with the same companies time after time, I kept getting told that I already have an account with that company and should use that, and, no, I cannot set up a new one.  Even when I have guessed how they see my user name, I have to try to remember the password they tolerated this time last year.  Of course, you can have them email you a reminder, but nowadays you are told that 'for security' there will be an intentional delay before the reminder is sent out, so you lose another 2 hours waiting for it to turn up in your inbox or more often your Junk box.  A plea to employers, please do not send out emails with simply 'HRdept' or 'HRServices' or 'Resources' in the email address; most email systems will send them straight to Junk immediately.  Get addresses that are more distinctive if you want them to get through.  So, finally you get to log in.  That is only the first hurdle, many more will follow.  I do wonder what is the point of logging in.  Going back to a company I had applied to for a different post a fortnight before I logged in and expected all the tedious details like my address, schooling and previous jobs to be remembered by the system.  It was clear that the account was working but had stored none of the information I had put in before so I had to go through right from the beginning once more typing in all the minutiae it requests.

A key challenge with online application forms seems to be the common mismatch between whichever department is recruiting the staff and the IT people who build the websites that you apply through.  Neither seems to be aware of how the other thinks.  Consequently I regularly apply for jobs with more than 25 requirements which I am expected to respond to and yet I read 'limit 4000 characters' sometimes with 'including spaces'.  Now, even if you use words no longer than 5 letters long that gives you less than 800 words to write.  This means you can only use 32 words per requirement.  You could basically type 'yes, I can do that' repeatedly, but certainly not 'provide evidence of your use of these skills'.  Typing in the name of one or two of the companies I have worked for uses up a quarter of my allocated words.  Of course the websites are generic for all sorts of roles across the company, but there is clearly no conversation between the web developers and the departments recruiting as to the amount of information the latter are demanding.  Of course, as I have noted before, many companies put far too many requirements for their jobs and they are often repetitive.  However, even if you halved it, to, say, 12 requirements, you would still have only 64 or fewer words and for most of the jobs I am going for, you need at least 200 words to say anything sensible (and, of course, many of the words will be longer than 5 letters).  A couple of the forms have further complexity.  Certain ones will not accept particular characters, difficult if you have ever worked abroad.  Some even do not accept common punctuation marks; one removed all the full stops, brackets and amphersands from my text.  It accepted full stops on some pages and not others and would not accept brackets anywhere, so some numbering had to be ended with a comma and some sentences simply with a space!  It seems no-one had tested the form using it in a way most people would.

Another key problem is pull-down menus.  Rather than allowing you to put in free text, increasingly it appears, you have to select from a long list.  Sometimes these lists seem unnecessarily extensive, I am not certain how many people entitled 'Lord Colonel' or 'Professor Reverend' the companies I apply to be employed by; even 'Sir' and 'Dame' seems a little too much.  In terms of towns and counties you seem to get a bewildering mix of locations 'South-End-on-Sea' rather than 'Southend' was one interesting option I saw.  Many of the towns seemed to be in the Russian Federation rather than the UK and the same applied to counties, many of which were located in India.  One one application form it seems they simply scooped up what people put on former applications, so one 'town' was a street address and Hampshire appeared both as 'Hampshire' and 'Hants' its old postal abbreviation.  If you leave these sections free text then people can put in their address no matter what country it is in.  When you reach the equal opportunities section, companies seem at a real loss as to which categories to put.  I think some intentionally are taking a dig at Nick Griffin who claimed there were no black Welshmen, as you can select 'White British' and even 'White Scottish' or 'White Welsh'.  As for mixed-race people you can tick a whole plethora of combinations.  The most genders I have seen is four (male, female, male to female transgender and female to male transgender); in my estimate they have left out hermaphrodite. I think the diversity information is useful to gather, but there needs to be real thought about drop down menus which make it complex especially as you have to search so far down the list to find 'United Kingdom' and you get so tempted to select a British dependency from further up the list instead.

The worst situation with the pull down menus, however, is on qualifications.  Of course, you are asked to put in everything you have ever studied even if it has no relevance to the job.  "Yes, I see you got a 'B' in Latin 'O' Level in 1981, excellent, that will really help with quality control of the production of our oil pipeline fittings'.  Then they do not have the qualifications you have studied from the list.  They have ever form of German doctorate you might want to take, but a lot of standard UK qualifications, especially professional ones, are missing.  Do you simply leave them off or stick them under some other category or try to get them into some free text part of the form?  I do not know, I have tried all approaches.  As UK companies recruit not only from across Europe but globally, it will be impossible to list all possible qualifications.  What does an engineer from Shanghai have on their list?  What about a call centre manager from Mumbai?  Can you list all the different qualifications?  Even if you tried you would have a list even more unwieldy and irrelevant than the current ones.  Again, it seems, that rather than being fit for purpose the choices are simply what someone on the website building team can think of.

The other key problem with online applications is how little time you get to complete them.  In recent days I have done one with a 20-minute time out and one with 30 minutes.  I know they do not want people staying logged into their system all day, but again there clearly has been no discussion between the web staff and the people recruiting.  Even if you do not have to type in every school, every employer and every training course you have attended since your birth, the requirements section, which, as I noted above, has an average of 25 things to respond to.  I cannot write anything coherent in less than 1 minute on each requirement.  The best online applications either save automatically periodically or allow you to save when you like.  At least then if you get timed out you (should) have a chance of logging in again and continuing.  Some of the functionality leaves a lot to be desired and the guidance shows how poorly the sites are designed.  One advised me to keep clicking forward on to the next 'page' and then back again (of course not using the browser 'Back' only the small misaligned one on the page) to ensure my answers we not lost. 

The worst, despite me logging in, timed me out having given me 30 minutes to answer 29 requirements that were to be put into 5 different groups on the website to the 7 groups they were in on the job specification.  Naturally I logged back in again and was frustrated to find that not only had I lost all the content on the page I had been working on, but that despite all the promises, all the content of the previous pages had gone.  I had to face typing in all my O Levels once again with no guarantee that I would not lose it all again.  The only solution was to mock-up the online form in Word and cut and paste (very quickly) the answers from each section.  I guessed it was worthwhile because given how difficult the website is to use, many potential applications are likely to give up reducing my competition.  However, what is the point of having an online application if the only way to complete it is to create your own form and copy over?  At least this online application allowed cutting and pasting, many disable that function meaning you have to type out every tedious bit of employers address or qualification again and again.

I know that with 70 applicants for every graduate vacancy, companies are seeking to reduce the number of applicants.  However, the online application forms which are now the norm for so many posts, seem simply to be poor and difficult to use due to the fact that the people building them have little idea what is required of them or how applicants will actually be expected to use them.  You get a good one only when the web designer has some experience of such forms and those that do seem very limited in number.  The general ignorance among so many staff about how websites work means they do not feel in a position to intervene or even ask for particular functionality.  There needs to be good dialogue between the recruiters and the web builders in a company as there should be between the marketing staff and the website builders.  People forget that often an online application form is the first real encounter a person who is considering working for you, has with the company.  On the basis of the bulk of (well, in fact almost all) the online application forms I have used, I would believe that UK companies are incredibly badly organised and have no control over their web presence; not something which is going to encourage me to work for them or, in fact, hire or trade with them.

Tied to Word

I have battled though my computer treating me like a moronic child to write this.  I have declined choosing my browser; I have noted twice (why does it ask you twice now?) that I have rarely used icons on my desktop that I am happy having there and not progressed with the 'wizard' to remove them; I have sat through updates generic ones and specific ones for Java and Adobe software; I have refused my memory stick asking if I want to run software off and declined to decide which sofware I might want to save images through on to it; I have decided not to register the other games and things I have on my system or download new stuff for World of Warcraft add-ons, my Steam account for wargaming or register other packages and have finally go to what I actually want to do.  Imagine on 'Star Trek' or 'Doctor Who' or a string of science fiction series if they had to click through a score of demands and could not operate the spaceship or time machine until 9 updates had been downloaded.  This was not the future I envisaged as I now have a computer that takes longer to start up than my ZX Spectrum did in 1982 when I had to load in software off audio cassettes.

That is a common gripe of mine and now I move to another computer issue which is around the continued dominance of Microsoft, not in terms of operating systems, which, in the UK, in contrast, say, to Germany, they are really unchallenged, but in terms of wordprocessing software.  In 2009, Office was used by 80% of businesses, with 80% of their files stored in one of its packages.  For the past year or so, the bundling of Microsoft Office on new computers has ended and you now have to go out and buy all the software at a cost of £200, which for the computers I buy, that is a third or more of the entire cost price of the computer.  Now, like many users I do not want to beholden to a particular company and certainly feel monopolies are unhealthy for consumers.  Remember that a monopoly does not mean one company has 100% control of sales, it is, as Milton Freeman in 'Capitalism and Freedom' (1962) helpfully summarises a situation in which: 'a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it'.  This is why you find other packages resembling the Office ones even when produced by other companies.  Furthermore as Blinder, Baumol and Gale in 'Monopoly' (2001) say a monopoly is: 'a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they [the monopoly company] provide and a lack of viable substitute goods'.

Now, I remember the excellent word processor package 'Locoscript' which came bundled with the Amstrad PCW256 and 512 computers in the late 1980s.  I have never encountered a word processing package half as good as that since.  Year on year the Microsoft take on an increasingly juvenile appearance with soft tones and round edges that do not communicate business to me.  There has been criticism of their most recent redesign for Office 2007 with Word have a series of folder tabs.  It continued the computing tendency to treat us like children, not certain about what we wanted to do with the facilities, rather than what most business people want to do, which is get on quickly with what we know we need to do.  Every time I get access to a new computer I have to go round disabling so much.  I have been writing letters from before the concept of the home computer was even taken as more than something in a science fiction fantasy alongside flying cars and domestic robots.  I do not need an American system to show me how to write a letter wrongly and try to make me use 'yours truly' at the end which only has a sarcastic use in British letters, not ever one that a business person would use.

In the James Bond movie, 'Tomorrow Never Dies' (1997), the prime baddie, poorly played by Jonathan Pryce is shown as launching a software package intentionally full of 'bugs', i.e. software functioning flaws, that customers will have to keep coming back to the company for 'patches' to repair the errors.  People have rather felt that Microsoft Vista operating system fits this kind of approach.  While I have seen how difficult it is to make Vista work properly in a business context, I do not think that Microfsoft wants to take over the world, I think they, like all companies, want simply to make as much money as possible.  In the age of saved personal information and loyalty card mentality all companies want to capture and hold customers.  Microsoft had to address the attempts at capturing unseen metadata in 2004 producing an add-on to expose this and in Office 2007 there is a document inspector to show it.  Microsoft has been critcised for its use of proprietary style software rather than open source which gives greater power for users to work on new developments, though gradually from 2004 and especially since 2008 it is moving in giving greater access to the code.  It is things like this that make people suspect some sort of conspiracy on Microsoft's part.  However, court rulings have shown that while there may be no great sinister intent, the position of Microsoft is seen as being unhealthy for the free marketplace and customer choice.

The big challenge for the average computer user is that while some greater choice may be being opened up by court rulings and legislation, for us, even when we have to buy our own copies of Office, the monopoly position persists.  This is because of the number of companies that simply default to Office packages, notably Word.  When I went for an interview last autumn I had to quickly teach myself Word 2007 as I was instructed to write a briefing report in 30 minutes using the computer provided.  I was quite impressed that I was able to get to grips with the alien layout and produce the report in time.  However, the assumption, was, that, of course, I would know Word 2007 (it being 2009).  I was in a weak position as not having bought a computer since 2006 I did not have the latest software and my previous employers, being heavily involved in computing, only ever buys the previous Microsoft Office package as it feels that that allows the errors to be ironed out.  Consequently up to my redundancy in summer 2009 I was still using Office 2003.

The problems, and thus the pressure to keep up with all of Microsoft's twists and turns with its software, continued as I came to my new employer.  I received all the documentation connected with my new job in .docx format which only came into use with Office 2007.  Of course, I could not even open the files and when I pleaded for them to be saved in the older .doc format no-one at the new employer understood what I was talking about.  So, if I get the money, I am compelled to buy the latest Office version simply to interact with employers and; most companies have no real idea about the changes in the software they are using and simply buy whatever is the latest.  I hear there is Office 2010 on the way and I dread what new formats and childish interfaces that will use.

So, what am I asking for?  Well it is two-fold.  One is that software for business looks like it is intended for business not for the primary school.  We need to be treated as adults who know what we are doing without constant, American-specific prompts.  We will seek out help and guidance when we need it but most of the time we want to get on quickly with our work.  The second thing is for companies to plough on not giving any thought to the software they use or the impact it will have on their workers and customers.  Do not simply default to the latest Microsoft package, think about it, and, as my previous employer did, have the courage to stick with something that you have confidence in.  Basically, we need to stand up for mature, business-orientated approaches to software.

P.P. 30/03/2015
I have come across an anomalous automatic correction in Word.  I am writing a medieval story in which characters use warhammers.  For some reason Word does not like this term even though it is historically correct.  What it invariably does is change it to Warhammer with a capital 'W'.  I have to change it back to lower case.  This change presumably is because of the lead figure and computer games named this.  However, 'Warhammer' (1983) the initial fantasy wargame was named after the weapon.  Thus, we have a situation where the commercial version is acceptable to Word but the legitimate word it was based on is not.  I imagine in time it will do the same to 'diplomacy' and 'monopoly'.

Rooksmoor's Guide to Conducting Job Interviews

While the internet is littered with advice on how to perform at job interviews, there seems to be very little advice to those actually running the interviews. As regular readers of this blog will know, in my career I have experienced numerous examples of very poor interviewing. A key problem is that many employers think there is nothing to it and most I have encountered never give any training to their staff on how to conduct interviews. Even more common is that there seems to be no discussion between the Human Resources department and interviewers before the interview takes place, so often the interviewers are working under serious misapprehensions or with out-of-date information about how their company actually recruits. Especially in a recession as at the moment, companies forget that interviewees are also making a judgement. One employer was stunned recently when I refused to attend an interview because the whole set-up seemed amateur and based on 'The X Factor' auditions rather than business practice. They seemed highly offended, forgetting that I was making a judgement too and had no desire to work for a company that behaves in such an amateur way from my first contact with them. Companies, of course, will whine, 'well this is how we've always done it' or 'this is the current trend' or 'it's the only way it can be done' or even more deluded, 'it's the best way to do it'. What they forget is that a poor process leads to poor output and the people they recruit will not be the best for the job and may be very dissatisfied, while better and more suited recruits go to their rivals.

It has been suggested that I set up a consultancy or training for companies in how to conduct interviews. Such services are out there but too few companies make use of them. Here I am going to give my advice for free. I emphasise it is a personal opinion grounded in my experiences over the past 20 years rather than on research. However, I do hope that someone pays attention for the sake of their company and their potential staff.


Have Realistic Expectations
This partly goes back to the original job advertisement. Far too companies now advertise posts that even just a few years ago would have crossed 2-4 jobs. I asked an interviewer recently to outline the kind of career path he would have envisaged anyone taking to get the very wide ranging skill set he was demanding. Of course, he could not do that. Too often companies forget that employees live in the real world not in some fantasy ideal. Even people who have clear career objectives are not able to get the posts or training to entirely match them. Certainly it is difficult to change career every 3-5 years simply to get a completely new skill set and even if you do then you would later be told your other skills were out-of-date or that as an employee you are too inconsistent. Yet many posts would have to have had you follow such a tortuous path to pick up that range of skills. Remember candidates come from the real world and anyone who tells you they have been down 3-4 career paths is lying or is approaching retirement.

Do not have 'make weight' candidates. I know some companies expect short lists of a certain length, but you have to stand up and say, 'we have invited all the suitable candidates'. In some cases that will be one person. It your short list is too long, then run a second round of interviews and tasks, but never, never bother with inviting people that you have no intention of ever giving the job to. It wastes your time and money, especially when your company pays expenses; it wastes the candidate's time and breed discontent among them. They will go off and bad mouth your company. I had attended three interviews at a particular company over the years. The last one was followed by them telling me that I had stood no chance of getting the job despite interviewing well; I had just been invited to make up the numbers. I told them that they were fools to have done this and utter idiots to have told me they had done so. I have never applied to that company again and tell anyone who considers it to stay clear of them. I know I am not a big voice in the industry, but perhaps they have lost good candidates because they treated me as disposable. I trust we are past the days when organisations, particularly schools, would advertise posts that did not actually exist in order to 'see what is out there' like some kind of research project about the current availability of candidates and their calibre. If you want to know that, do some proper research, do not play with people. It wastes time and effort on your part and breeds bad blood among people who may be who you really want in the future.

Have realistic expectations in the interview itself. Interviews seem to be getting shorter and shorter. Despite the increasingly complex job descriptions (20-30 requirements, often even more are not unusual) the time for the interview is getting shorter. There is really no point having a 20-minute interview and even 30 minutes is tight. These days companies shave 10-15 minutes off the interview for a presentation, though in many cases have no real idea what they want from the presentation. You need a decent 45 minutes for an interview, with the presentation, if you feel you must have one, on top. You can probably see five candidates in a day. Given that a decent 'short' list is 4-6 candidates, that is fine. Start early and you can do it.

If you have 30 requirements for the job you need to allow time for the interviewee to talk to you at least a decent amount of them. Otherwise, what was the point of including those in the specifications? Of course, most companies can reduce the requirements for a job by about 35-50%, sometimes more, so going from 20 requirements down to, say, 10-12. That is still a lot to talk about, but is actually more realistic. In almost every job I apply for there is repetition and overlap between the different requirements. Despite employers emphasising the need for prioritisation in your work, they seem utterly incapable of doing that themselves. Thus, on the specification you too often get a list of every minute task you might do on the job and it is then turned into a requirement in which the candudate must have experience. It is incredibly unlikely that unless I am actually already in the job you are offering me that I can match all of that. What you need is someone who can turn their hand to those tasks even if they have not done those precise things before.

Do not expect an answer to the impossible. Recently I was asked how I would address a particular lack in training among a particular set of workers. There are three standard approaches to this and I suggested all three in turn and advised a hybrid model. However, the interviewer rejected each method in turn saying her workers did not have the time to access any of the methods. Yet, she continued to demand that I provide a solution. I kept persisting with different balances of the methods and all the innovations I could think of, but she remained dissatisfied. She wanted skills to be got into the workers with no time and no facilities to do it and seemed indignant that I could not provide the answer. I had to hold my hands up and say it was impossible. This was the time when I realised that even if I got the job working for that company would be a nightmare as they expect the impossible. Sometimes this develops because the candidate, though usually knowledgeable about your business because of their preparation, does not know about the behind closed doors peculiarities of your company, bear that in mind when you judge their answer. However, certainly do not present impossible situations unless you want to gauge whether the candidates to recognise they are impossible. We are not talking about unpleasant solutions like redundancy or cutbacks, we are talking about things that are impossible within the constraints you have laid down. Either alter the constraints or give up on your desired objective otherwise you and your staff will all end up dissatisfied. To distort a phrase, only very few can work miracles; the impossible remains impossible.


Knowing What You Are Looking For
This follows on from the elements raised above. It is made tough for interviewers by the fact they are expected to find an impossible person. The very detail of the specification often masks actually the kind of person that is truly being sought. The clearest case of this came up when I was actually on an interview panel. The post was as assistant to a leading manager and the candidates, all bar one female, varied between very submissive people who would have been great in a servant/personal assistant way across to people who could immediately stand in for the manager for whatever reason; a real lieutenant. It was only at the stage of looking at the different candidates after the interview that the question of what the manager actually wanted or needed from this spectrum came up. She said she wanted a lieutenant and that was what we gave her. In fact, she was lying to herself. What she wanted was a servant someone who would have no initiative but do everything she asked without question. Instead she got a very experienced woman with lots of initiative and her own ideas and of course friction quickly developed and within a year this woman was gone. Actually thinking through the kind of person you need and actually looking for them in the interview is vital for getting the correct person for the job. Of course, many interviewers are hamstrung by the specifications, which are often poorly thought out themselves. However, have an idea of what the job actually entails and what type of person is needed before you start the interviews.


If It Is Important, Get To It As Soon As You Can
This comes back to the shortness of interviews these days and the range of requirements. To me it seems that too many interview panels seem to start asking unimportant questions first and because they only have 20 minutes run out of time to get to the important ones. As noted above, prioritisation on interview panels is often poor. The fact that the interviewers spend so long on the mundane stuff, they are left in a position in which they cannot truly judge the candidate which makes all the effort on detailed specifications a waste of time. Again, not really knowing what kind of person they want does not help with prioritising the questions to be asked.

I was angered recently when I was told after an interview that as interviewee, I should have moved it on to the important topics far faster. I thought I had done. However, it is not the role of the interviewee to dictate what is asked, that is up to the interviewers. If, as an interviewer, you ask a question, the candidate will naturally assume it is important and seek to answer it as best they can. Do not expect them to be able to second guess your agenda. Interviewers drive the interview and should not abdicate control to the candidates and certainly not expect them to be psychic and know which paths you want to go down. If you want certain information and it is important to you ask for it and ask for it immediately. Interviewers, have confidence in what you want to find out and go out and find it; drive the interview not leave it languishing between you and the candidate as very, very few candidates will take control. If they do, they will have seen how inadequate you are and will have a lower opinion of your company.


Avoid Gimmicks And Hobbyhorses
There are fashions in interviews, in application forms and in CVs. Too often people lacking confidence in their interviewing or being confident but incompetent, adhere to fashions. In the early 2000s they would reject a candidate simply because they chose not to use Powerpoint. Now, there is a backlash and they want them to use other means. At the end of the day, in fact, it does not matter what media the candidate uses (they can always be easily trained in it), it is about how they present their ideas and, above all, though many interviewers forget this, what they are actually saying. To reject people because they adopt a particular approach, is actually discriminatory, though most interviewers do not realise this. Different countries and cultures have different approaches. In China oral presentations with reference to printed text is a norm. In New Zealand family or clan members will attend an interview and make a statement on behalf of the candidate. People coming for jobs in the UK will have to fit with the UK model, but then do no shove a whole other layer of expectations on top, that you actually cannot articulate yourself very well and have little idea why they are or are not important to the job you are interviewing for. Too many interviewers turn emphemeral fashion into some serious requirement, whereas, in fact, a year down the line people will be doing something different and you will have recruited someone who is good in the moment but no good for the duration. Look beyond current fashions to real skills and communication.

The same thing applies to hobbyhorses. All of us have an aspect of our work that we find particularly interesting, but we need to rein this in otherwise it can really distort an interview. I was on a panel with a woman who always questioned candidates about what time management software they used and put great store by their answers even if was not part of the job specifications. Of course, it gave no indication as to how skilled the candidate actually was at time management and she forgot that in a short time the software would be obsolete. Even worse was an interviewer who I faced six times. It became apparent that she decided on the suitability of the candidate before the interview. She separated the world into those who were 'born' (her word) to the role and the rest. She had no faith in training of any kind. If she felt you were among the elect you would get the job otherwise you stood no chance as I eventually realised. This was in the early 2000s and even then she should have been questioned about her approach because it goes against having job specifications as she often ruled out people who matched them very well. However, as we all know, once people reach certain seniority they are untouchable. Her approach meant recruiting a dozen people, a number of whom were probably not best suited to the job they were given, but to her intuition appeared to be 'born' to it.

It is human nature to fall back on assumptions and prejudices, but you can really do your company a disfavour if you let them rule your decision making as an interviewer. Go back to the specification and focus on what it is asking for and try to judge candidates on that basis not how you take to them or because they comply with something that just you think is important: no one factor makes a candidate suitable or unsuitable.


Prepare
Obviously I have touched on a lot of what needs to be done mentally before an interview, especially in determining the kind of person you are really looking for, unprejudiced by your own personal quirks. However, one thing that a lot of interview panels fall down on, is in the practical arrangement of the interview. I could do a whole posting just on this, but will try to stick to a couple of examples.

In the first case, the toilets near the interview rooms was being decorated and I had to be taken down a number of floors to find one and even the interviewer found it difficult getting passed all the workers. I poured a glass of water to find all the cups were cracked. The noise of the workers constantly disrupted the interview. Clearly this was major work and the interview should have been held elsewhere or on a different day. No-one had checked and they had not even checked the water glasses. It suggested the company was rather slapdash.

Recently an interview I attended was delayed by an hour because none of the interview panel knew how to operate the laptop or data projector that they were expecting candidates to use. This was appalling. Either they should have practised beforehand or had technical support on standby to help out. Issues do arise, but they should never delay an interview by an hour. Given that the job had a computer element to it, I did wonder about the competence in that field of the staff I would be working under if they were unable to activate what is basic equipment.

Possibly the worst interview I attended had a screen for presentations at the far end of a 8 metre long table. The interviewers were arranged in an arc so that they could face the screen. Not being a fan of Powerpoint I had opted not to use it (which was actually what lost me the job they told me later), but was expected to be interviewed with one interviewer sitting behind my left shoulder, one beside me and only one slightly in front of me to the left. I accept there is a transition between the presentation stage and the interview and am happy to move to a different seat, but clear the interview had been set up with no thought for what would happen after the presentation was over, despite the fact that the interview stage lasted 30 minutes to 10 minutes of presentation. I had to twist my neck to see two of the interviewers; that is discriminatory as with some disabilities I would have been unable to do that. The lead interviewer was far more nervous than me and described herself as being her colleague. Clearly she needed more practise. Given that this was at the company that later treated me as a 'make weight' candidate maybe it should have been no surprise that the whole thing appeared so amateur.

As an interviewer, you expect your candidates to arrive thoroughly prepared, that goes for you too. Often the interview is the first time that people get to really meet your company. Do not make yourselves look like a bunch of amateurs who do not know what they want or even how to use basic equipment. No-one is compelled to take a job with you; the best candidates can always go somewhere else, even in a recession, so make a good impression. A good impression comes from good preparation. Do not simply walk into an interview, rather, beforehand, meet with the other members of the panel, check the room and equipment yourself and know where everything is and how it all works. Poor quality interviewers only recruit poor quality employees.


Know About Recruitment At Your Company
This is an extension of my advice about preparing, but is something I have noticed so often it is worthwhile having a separate section. Often interview panels have a member of the Human Resources department included, which is good, but too often even these people seem ill-informed about very common questions interviewees are going to ask. Many interviewees are going to ask about pay, leave, conditions, relocation expenses, child care, etc., so before you are part of an interview panel make sure you know the up-to-date information on this. It is no good to say refer to a website, because on that information the candidate may be judging whether they want the job or not. As they may be offered the job while on the journey home, they need to know now not later in order to make that judgement. For my last job I was offered £4000 in relocation expenses at the interview, but because of caveats which were apparently on the website (though I was unable to find them despite a thorough search) this was reduced to £500 and left me in a financial position that I had not got out of even months after having worked for the company.

The other thing that has struck me is that many interviewers have in their mind a whole string of assumptions about how their company recruits people that are either out-of-date or simply wrong. There was a phases in the early 2000s when more online applications were available, and many companies assumed that because they had a pdf you could print out, that that equated to an 'online' application, whereas in fact it translated to an application form that you had to fill in by hand as you would have done back in the 1990s. Yet, interviewer after interviewer seemed surprised by hand completed forms assuming their application process was now 'online' without asking what that actually meant.

The worst case happened recently when an interviewer expressed surprise at the application form I had used to apply for a job. It had been the one applicants were directed to and clearly was the correct one as I never would have been shortlisted otherwise. However, she felt it was lacking certain information and it was clear she had not spoken to Human Resources at all about what sort of forms they were using and whether the elicit the information the interviewer was felt necessary.

This continued. In feedback, the interviewer revealed that not finding a declaration from me saying I did not have a criminal record spent much of the interview trying to find this out so missed out on the really important questions. Aside from the obvious questions about obsessing over this in the interview (the job is in fact open to people with criminal records) when she could have got the information later and not asking about it directly, she had failed to realise, or bothered to find out, that all such declarations go direct to Human Resources, not the interviewers. Hence, she was questioning indirectly about something that her company had received and had gone to the correct people for the procedures in place.  Thus, she effectively rendered the interview a waste of time, all because she had not bothered to find out how her company actually recruits people.


Assist The Candidates
I arrived at the company to be told that I could not park on the site and should drive into the city 5Km away and catch a bus back to the site. I had never been to the city before and though I had navigated my way to the site, I had no idea about the bus services or the car parks and given that the interview was forty minutes away probably would not have made it back in time. I managed to persuade a security guard to let me park. I had not been warned about any of this beforehand. Partly this kind of careless attitude stems for a kind of machismo: that if the candidates cannot parachute on to the site and abseil down to the interview room, or the equivalent, then they are no good. However, the message it gives in fact is, that you cannot even be bothered to think through what a candidate needs to go through to reach your interview. Organise parking for candidates, or if that is not possible, tell them where they can find it, where they can get food, taxis and so on. They are often strangers to your location so help them out, it is not difficult. You can even produce a standardised information sheet you send to all candidates or put it up on your website.

In most businesses now, people travel hundreds of kilometres for an interview. They often need to have accommodation when they arrive and need to know where they can get dinner on a Sunday night or how far the site is from the railway station. Companies insist you book 7 days ahead for rail tickets if they are going to pay expenses and yet they inform you of the interview only 2-5 days beforehand. This is again discriminatory, as anyone with religious or care commitments might find it impossible to re-arrange their lives to fit your sudden decision to see them at such short notice. It is not being tough to demand all this from candidates, it is simply callous.

Of course, we can all find out about towns using the internet, but it is far better if we are given a list of places to stay, even if you can book them for us, using local contacts. One company did this for me and paid the bill so easing the processing as I did not have to reclaim expenses. If you want to attract good candidates you need to ease their journey to and from your interview. This is also helped by having a clear schedule and not like the 'X Factor' company, not giving any indication of when the candidate will be interviewed. To do that is again discriminatory. People with certain health conditions need to know when they can take medication or when they should/can eat and certain religions need prayer at certain times of the day. Too many companies plough ahead with an attitude of 'put up and shut up' again failing to realise how poorly it reflects on them.

Some companies seem incredulous when I ask who is on the interview panel. Some people let you know as a matter of course, others see it as an intrusion into confidential information. However, the UK is not a big country and when you start talking about specific roles in particular industries, then you quickly narrow down the range of people working in that area. It cuts both ways, I do not want to be interviewed by someone I made a harassment complaint against and you do not want me being interviewed by a friend of mine on the panel. Again, schools provided some of the worst examples of this tricksy behaviour, with headteachers dissembling throughout the day as an ordinary teacher taking the candidate around only later to reveal who they really were and using any candid information they had picked up during the day against the candidate. Again, I hope such behaviour is dead. For me, knowing the backgrounds of the people interviewing me, what knowledge they have, and their outlook on things is important. Companies often have details of their leading employees on websites but then, ironically, are suddenly offended if you ask who will be on your actual interview panel.

Pay expenses. Out of your company budget, some travelling and accommodation expenses are minimal, but to candidates, especially those who are currently unemployed, they can be very important. Again, they signal how much you do or do not care about the candidate. It is no point saying that you give wonderful salaries and benefits packages if you cannot pay out a hundred pounds for a person coming to interview. Either you want them to attend and you pay for them to attend or you do not want them. Do not give out the signal you only half want them by not paying expenses or they can easily turn to a company that makes it clear they are truly in with a chance of a job.

Give feedback. The ironic thing about the bad practices I have mentioned here is that everyone who carries them out has been a candidate at some time themselves, yet, still behave in a way they would have loathed to have experienced themselves. Again, it is part of machismo of business that was introduced in the 1980s that generally you do not tell people if they have been shortlisted or not, they simply say, if you have not heard in two or four or even six weeks, assume you have not been selected. Think how you would feel left in limbo for six weeks about a post, your life is on hold. The same applies when waiting to hear if you have got the job after the interview.  Usually after 24 hours you can guess you have not got the job, though this is not always the case, I have been offered a job over a week after the interview took place.  I accept I might have not been the first choice, but to be left assuming I had failed was not fair.  Companies complain it is too expensive to write to anyone, but in these days of emails being effectively free to companies, it can be done simply and in bulk. Even getting a generic email saying you have not been short listed is better than never getting anything.

When it comes to the people you actually interview, there is no excuse for not providing a formal letter outlining that they failed to get the job. You only have to do this for 4-5 people or less. If the candidate was good enough that you invited them for interview they are worthy of getting a proper response. Many companies do not give feedback on interviews, but that suggests that their interview procedures were unsound and that they are embarrassed to reveal that they simply gave the job to someone they knew or almost picked them at random (which actually often happens given the failings in the actual interviews detailed above). Eliminate that feeling that you made your decision arbitrarily, give feedback, refer to the specifications.

Give the candidates some faith that they are not simply entering a lottery if they apply for a job with you, but that they have been part of a professional process. Of course, that does mean you have to have had a professional process in place, but if you have followed my guidance above, you should have done. I have been interviewed by one company for six posts, another for three posts and my last employer for four posts, so there is a good chance that a candidate will come back to you for other vacancies. They need to know if they are wasting their time in applying again and they want to know how to improve their chances in the future. Again, this helps you get better candidates (especially if this one just missed out or would be ideal for another role) and also discourage truly unsuitable people from applying again, so saving you time processing their future applications.



Overall, when setting up and conducting interviews bear in mind two principles. 1) How do I want my company appear to someone visiting it? 2) What is it like to be interviewed and how can I make that a good experience for the candidate? In this way you will not show to candidates a company which is disorganised, unskilled or callous, but one that knows what it is about and what it wants and treats its (potential) employees with consideration. Do that and you will not only save embarrassment for yourself, your colleagues and your company but it will also enable you to secure the best candidate.

P.P. 19/04/2011
Since originally writing this posting, I have had numerous other interviews and consequently have come across another thing that about a third of the companies which have interviewed me since 2009 have made.  This is to assign the calling of people to interview (usually by email) to someone who is about to go on leave.  In these cases, I email back to the invitation to interview only to have an 'Out of Office' automated response telling me that the person is now on leave for one or two weeks; in the worst cases not returning until the interview has taken place.

Do Not Have People Acting As Points Of Contact Just Before They Go On Leave
I imagine that companies see calling people to interview as a minor activity that can be left to someone in the time they have before they go on holiday.  However, for the interviewee it means the one point of contact you have been given with the company is immediately broken.  Often the 'Out of Office' advises you to contact a colleague of the person on leave.  I have tried that on many occasions only to find these alternatives have no idea that there is even an interview being carried out.  Why is this important?  Well, there is a lot to find out before you come to an interview.  I know companies think that they provide all the necessary information for the interview straight off or that it can be found on their websites.  This is, in fact, rarely the case.

Many companies believe there is information on their websites, which is actually not there.  They also seem to assume that outsiders can access internal documentation, but often you run up against a section requiring a password.  In addition, there is a difference between showing a map with car parks on it and being able to know if by, say, 1pm when the interviewee needs to arrive all of these car parks will be full.  As companies set more bizarre tasks for the interviewees, they often fully understand what the task entails, but it is not always as clear to the candidates.  I accept that some companies see this as a task in itself, but it is good to have clarity on the principles I have outlined above.  One example recently was that I was told I would be discussing a case study.  However, it was not clear whether I should provide the case study myself or whether it would be one given at the interview.

Another issue is that at times you will need to try and adjust the date or time of the interview.  Companies seem to work at the two extremes.  Some will have no alteration of the time or day they send you (unless a problem develops at their end when they will be happy to keep you waiting for hours beyond the scheduled time) or they interview people on different days to fit in.  On three occasions in recent months I have been called to two interviews on the same day.  This happens because interviews predominantly happen on a Tuesday with the next popular day being Friday.  This means that the days for interviews is very limited.  I am quite lucky in that I get called to interview for every three applications I make and this should show that a number of companies value my skills and experience, especially as I have usually beaten off 65-95 other people even to get to the interview.  Thus, I have had to rush hundreds of kilometres between interviews.  Unfortunately now in 2011, the willingness to modify an interview time for even 30 minutes seems to have gone and a 'take it or leave it' mentality has been adopted.  I guess this is because there are so many potential candidates now available.  However, ironically, it means that companies might not be seeing the best candidates, the ones a number of companies are interested in.

A consequence of all of this is that you need to be able to talk to/email someone almost immediately once you have been invited to interview.  I accept that some companies have no interest in helping the interviewees; they think they are doing them a big favour just by calling them.  However, a good company will make sure that the point of contact with interviewees will not disappear off on holiday the moment they have sent out the invitations and be ready to either respond to queries or at least pass them on to the relevant person.