This week for one of our assignments, we had to interview someone (outside of healthcare) who is responsible for hiring employees. I chose to interview one of my good friends, Rachel J., who is a Team Lead at Vivint.
Q: How much of your decision making is based off of personal appearance such as: facial expressions, tone of voice, general appearance, gender, mannerisms, hair style, etc?
A: I base a lot on whether they come to the interview dressed nice. Even though our dress code at Vivint is really relaxed, I like to see them put effort into the interview and take pride in their appearance. Also since the job is a phone job, their tone of voice and ability to sound polite on the phone is important.
Q: How often do you come prepared when you interview with a candidate, such as looking at the candidate's resume beforehand?
A: I'll usually briefly read through their resume and look to make sure it is professional. We hire a lot of young, right out of high school teenagers, so I don't expect them to have a lot of work experience.
Q: What are some immediate disqualifiers for you when you conduct interviews?
A: If someone cannot communicate well, they are not going to do well in a customer service phone job. Or if they cannot commit to the job for at least 6 months.
Q: How do you prevent or reduce personal bias when conducting interviews?
A: We always interview with another person in the room as well, so that we can both give input on the candidate and hopefully not be biased.
Q: How do you decide who is the best person(s) to be part of the interview in the room?
A: I like to have a supervisor with me and if possible, someone in lower leadership. They will be the ones working with them the most if they get hired, so their opinion is important.
Q: Should you choose that a candidate is not a good fit for the job, do you prefer to let them know why employment is not pursued or send out generic emails? Why or why not?
A: We don't really give them any reason as to why they didn't get hired, but it takes a lot for us to not hire someone because we are always in need of employees. But if they don't get the job, then they get a generic email.
Q: How many rounds of interviewing do you think are necessary to properly get to know a candidate - or is there something you prefer? If so, why?
A: I like to do a phone interview first to see if they can express themselves well over the phone and how friendly their voice sounds on the phone. Then we do an in-person interview. I think that is sufficient for this job.
Q: What style of leadership do you like to portray in your interviews? Why?
A: I think I just like to make them feel comfortable. I know, as someone who doesn't love being interviewed myself, that it can be an intimidating experience so I just try to make the mood light-hearted and relaxed.
Q: How many candidates do you interview for a position? If you find a candidate that you like, do you finish the interviews knowing you're not going to hire the others?
A: We are usually hiring for large groups at a time so we will basically interview anyone who is able to commit to the schedule we are offering. We interview all the candidates.
Q: What qualities do you look for in a candidate?
A: Someone who is empathetic and polite and has confidence. They need to be able to be king on the phone and also be able to de-escalate upset customers. Someone who can handle stress well because the job can get pretty intense during an emergency.
Q: Which is more important: skill/past experience, or a long-term commitment/passion about the position?
A: I think passion and commitment are more important. They can learn the skills on the job.
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Q: How much of your decision making is based off of personal appearance such as: facial expressions, tone of voice, general appearance, gender, mannerisms, hair style, etc?
A: I base a lot on whether they come to the interview dressed nice. Even though our dress code at Vivint is really relaxed, I like to see them put effort into the interview and take pride in their appearance. Also since the job is a phone job, their tone of voice and ability to sound polite on the phone is important.
Q: How often do you come prepared when you interview with a candidate, such as looking at the candidate's resume beforehand?
A: I'll usually briefly read through their resume and look to make sure it is professional. We hire a lot of young, right out of high school teenagers, so I don't expect them to have a lot of work experience.
Q: What are some immediate disqualifiers for you when you conduct interviews?
A: If someone cannot communicate well, they are not going to do well in a customer service phone job. Or if they cannot commit to the job for at least 6 months.
Q: How do you prevent or reduce personal bias when conducting interviews?
A: We always interview with another person in the room as well, so that we can both give input on the candidate and hopefully not be biased.
Q: How do you decide who is the best person(s) to be part of the interview in the room?
A: I like to have a supervisor with me and if possible, someone in lower leadership. They will be the ones working with them the most if they get hired, so their opinion is important.
Q: Should you choose that a candidate is not a good fit for the job, do you prefer to let them know why employment is not pursued or send out generic emails? Why or why not?
A: We don't really give them any reason as to why they didn't get hired, but it takes a lot for us to not hire someone because we are always in need of employees. But if they don't get the job, then they get a generic email.
Q: How many rounds of interviewing do you think are necessary to properly get to know a candidate - or is there something you prefer? If so, why?
A: I like to do a phone interview first to see if they can express themselves well over the phone and how friendly their voice sounds on the phone. Then we do an in-person interview. I think that is sufficient for this job.
Q: What style of leadership do you like to portray in your interviews? Why?
A: I think I just like to make them feel comfortable. I know, as someone who doesn't love being interviewed myself, that it can be an intimidating experience so I just try to make the mood light-hearted and relaxed.
Q: How many candidates do you interview for a position? If you find a candidate that you like, do you finish the interviews knowing you're not going to hire the others?
A: We are usually hiring for large groups at a time so we will basically interview anyone who is able to commit to the schedule we are offering. We interview all the candidates.
Q: What qualities do you look for in a candidate?
A: Someone who is empathetic and polite and has confidence. They need to be able to be king on the phone and also be able to de-escalate upset customers. Someone who can handle stress well because the job can get pretty intense during an emergency.
Q: Which is more important: skill/past experience, or a long-term commitment/passion about the position?
A: I think passion and commitment are more important. They can learn the skills on the job.
Overall, conducting this interview was very interesting. Now I'm curious to see what a healthcare worker would have said in this situation, especially about the last question. I feel like skill and past experience would be a larger contributing factor when looking at healthcare, but I could also see how in some situations I could be wrong about that. Like my friend Rachel mentioned, skills can be learned on the job, but if the candidate isn't passionate about the position and what they are doing, that's not something that can be taught.
I think that this was a good learning activity, because it made me think about what goes into the interview from the interviewer side. When coming up with the questions and hearing my friend's answers to them, I found myself wondering how I would answer them. I may not have conducted any interviews yet, but I still found myself developing my own answers to the questions and looking at how my answers differed from Rachel's.
I was also present for one of my teammate's interviews, which brought up an interesting and completely different perspective. My teammate, Katy, interviewed Jayson, the hiring manager for J. Dawgs. One thing he said that caught me off guard was that an immediate disqualifier when he is interviewing a candidate is if the candidate is vegetarian. He then went on to say that if they haven't tried the product themselves how can they promote it? It made me stop and think because I had never even considered that. It just goes to show that every job is different and requires a different skill set. It also made me realize why we had to interview someone outside of healthcare for this. I think it was because of the different perspective that we would be presented with. In healthcare, most of us are probably looking for similar candidates, and we expect candidates to have a certain set of skills. But outside of healthcare, you run into all kinds of different candidates from different walks of life: different educational background, different experience, different goals.
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