As a hiring manager in the brewing industry, you may spend countless hours interviewing candidates every time you have an open role to fill. To make sure you maximize time spent getting to know each candidate and establishing their core skills, it is important to be adequately prepared. Knowing how to properly structure an interview, including what to ask, will ensure you don’t waste any time during the interview process and can be confident when making your final hiring decision.

In this article, we list the top 3 best practices to follow during your next interview process.

1. Choose the right people to conduct the interview

This question is important because some companies involve too many people in the interview process, while others include not enough. For the first-round interviews, it’s best to have a Recruiter conduct the initial screening interview, which can be over the phone. For the next round of interviews, the hiring manager should be involved, as well as the direct supervisor of the candidate. These are the people that best understand the role that the new candidate will be stepping into and can therefore assess if they have what it takes to be successful.

Its not a bad idea to also consider involving someone from another department that would often interact with and work with the successful hire. Having a cross-functional hiring team can provide a stronger and more thorough assessment as to how that candidate will do in a role, especially if there is a lot of cross-functional teamwork. Just remember, if you are conducting a panel interview, try to limit the number of interviewers to no more than three people.

2. What should you ask?

The next thing to do is prepare your interview questionnaire. This same list of questions must be used to interview all candidates for the same role to ensure a fair recruitment process. When comparing candidates, you should be able to compare how they fared across the same questions. Also, having an interview that is unplanned and purely conversational is not sufficient in understanding whether an applicant is capable to succeed in your role.

Key questions to ask include why a candidate is looking to leave their current role, and what they hope to gain from joining your open role and your organization. Also, be sure to ask questions that cover off the core skillsets listed as requirements in your job posting – these are listed because they are qualifications needed to be successful in the role. So make sure you are asking enough questions to be confident candidates have what it takes to meet each skill criteria. Finally, do not forget to ask closing questions including salary, vacation and benefit expectations, and how soon they can start. Asking the right questions ensures less time wasted with the candidate after the interview to verify information you forgot to ask during the interview.

3. Will there be any technical testing, sample work etc?

Depending on the type of role, it may be wise to ask for a portfolio of work, or even include a technical test as part of your process. For example, for a creative position at your brewery, such as a marketing role or graphic designer, you likely want to see a portfolio of previous websites, can labels, or new product campaigns that your candidates worked on. In technical positions such as accounting and finance, you could consider providing a sample piece of work that simulates a real on-the-job task to your candidate. Give your applicant instructions and a set amount of time and see how they do on the task.

Follow up

Finally, at the end of the process, do not forget to wrap up the process with each of the interviewed candidates. If you have taken the time to bring in applicants to your office to interview, as a courtesy, regardless of whether they are the successful hire or not, you should give them a quick call to let them know the process if over.

Following the three simple steps mentioned can guarantee you will make the right hire the first time.

By Christine Juszczak