There’s one thing worse than not hiring anyone in the recruitment process— hiring the wrong person. Not only do you need to repeat the process all over again, but you need to figure out what to do with the unqualified candidate that passed the assessments in your hiring process.

To ensure that doesn’t happen, you need to use your top-quality interviewers to assess the candidates in the hiring process.

It’s not easy pinpointing what qualities make someone a top-quality interviewer and that’s why we created this article to help you out with it.

The 4 top qualities of an interviewer

There are multiple qualities a hiring manager should have, but only four of them make them a top-quality interview. These four skills will help your hiring manager assess the candidates in the best possible way and ensure that you hire the right person in your organization:

Emotional maturity

A top-quality interviewer will be emotionally mature. They will have high emotional intelligence (EQ) and they will know how to “read the room.” Conducting an interview is more than sitting down, reading the questions, and writing notes as the candidates respond.

When the interviewer is emotionally mature, they understand when they need to use an icebreaker with the candidate to relax them and ensure that they have a conversation with the candidate when they’re at their best. They care so they want to interview the candidates to find the best one so they make sure to do everything they can to put the candidate in the best possible situation.

Preparation

No matter how emotionally mature the interviewer is, they still need to “follow the basics.” And basics are all about preparation. It’s the situation where the pilot goes through the routine check/checklist thousands of times, but they need to do so in order to be prepared for every situation. The same applies to someone who is a top-quality interviewer.

They prepare themselves for the interview, read the questions they want to ask the candidate beforehand, set up the interviewing room physically, or test out the virtual room if the interview is done online. A top-quality interviewer will be able to present (sell) the company to the candidate because an interview is a two-way street where both the interviewer assesses the candidate and the candidate assesses the organization.

Listening 

A top-quality interviewer will understand that during the interview process, they will need to listen attentively to the candidate. They will need to “listen with their eyes and look with their ears” since most of the communication of the candidate will be nonverbal. So the interviewer will have to look at the body language of the candidate, listen to their tone of voice, and understand what’s being said behind the words the candidate speaks.

On top of that, the top-quality interviewer will know that they can’t rely on their memory of how the candidate responded so they will need to write down concise, but informative notes of the candidate’s responses. To do so, they will have to use the right tech.

The right tech

The last thing a top-quality interviewer needs to conduct great interviews is the right tech. The interviewer needs to be tech-savvy to ensure that they use the right applications and tech to set up the interview, choose the right questions, create interview scorecards, write/record the answers as notes, and communicate with the candidate pre, during, and post-interview.

A top-quality interviewer will use the right technology to enhance the interview experience for both the candidate and them as well, collecting answers and notes on the candidates’ responses, which will lead to data-based decisions later on.

Conclusion

Even if you have top-quality interviewers, they can still fall behind in the hiring process. Preparing everything regarding an interview is time-consuming for hiring managers, but there’s a way you can make their time more productive.

With an Interview Guide Builder, you can help your interviewers create competency-based interview guides in a matter of minutes. The Guide Builder was designed by organizational psychologists so it’s based on science and it also ensures that you conduct legal interviews.