Interview Strategies - part II

This is going to be a real short one. This post is in continuation from my earlier post (interview strategies - part I), wherein I shared my experience and methods of shortlisting candidates for the post of product manager. In this post I would like to caution interviewers of some Don'ts of telephonic round.

Objectives of telephonic round is to ensure that candidate meets all prerequisites of the role. Telephonic round is like running a small software utility before installing your software to ensure that computer has necessary environment to support your complex product.

Interview Strategies - part I

Recruiting a product manager is a big task, and a challenge that has taught me quite some interesting ways of assessing candidates and making sure that I pick the best fit candidate for my requirement. Going through large number of CVs, shortlisting and interviewing is a tiring processing and without having proper strategy, accuracy of judgement will be low.

How to I judge a candidate, how do I differentiate between what a candidate pretends to be vs how he is. From my recent experience, I have realized that having a strategy to interview candidates is non-negotiable. While I continue to learn and improvise on my strategies, here are some ideas I found useful to judge a candidate's fit into the role.

Start with yourself, have clarify in Job description and know your preferences before you start looking into CVs shared by recruitment team. Make sure you are clear of expectation from the candidate and are sure of candidate's growth path in the company. Interview is a two way process, while you assess candidate, candidate too assess company and people with whom he interacts during the course of interview. Be clear with what is that you are offering to a candidate and what is a good reason for him to join you.