The purpose of the initial recruitment screen is to roughly understand if the candidate meets the job requirements and give the candidate as much insight into the role as possible.
Before you start interviewing your Design candidates for an open role, you should map out a list of the right questions to ask and how you will structure the interview.
It’s crucial for you to be fully prepared for the interview. Make sure you’ve talked to the hiring manager before you meet with candidates and you understand the role, requirements, and responsibilities. You should also be familiar with the CV and portfolio before the interview starts so that you can focus on your questions, not the candidate’s background, which is clearly stated in their resume.
We suggest crafting an interview script and sticking to it. Define questions that need to be asked and how you phrase them. This may sound boring, but you will improve your interview skills and keep the quality of information you get from the candidate.
By consistently using the same script for a given role, you’ll become stronger at evaluating the skill set and learn to see differences in how candidates answer your questions.
Still, the best advantage of having an interview script is that you can set up the right timeline expectations for the candidate and keep a quick pace.
You may say that’s the most boring question in the world — and you’ll be right! But the most general and “boring” questions will let you know the candidate’s sheer focus and priorities. Let them tell you their story, highlighting their strengths and accomplishments.
(Especially for Junior talent). They will tell you how excited and passionate they are about their work and what they do. Knowing the answer, you can offer them a role they will be truly excited about.
What motivates them? This tells you what recruiting assets to highlight and is the key to closing them later. You’ll now know their passions: Visual or Interaction, complex heavy-weight enterprise products, or dynamic mobile apps…
(or a project they are really proud of). The answer will show the level of the project complexity they dealt with and what they actually consider to be “challenging”. It will give you a clue on what projects they could be a good fit for.