Becoming a Great Job Interviewer

Do you spend several hours preparing for interviews — reviewing resumes, looking over job descriptions, writing and rewriting questions until each one is as finely honed as a razor blade? Or are you the kind of interviewer who starts preparing for the interview when you hear that your candidate has arrived?

The secret to becoming a great interviewer is to spend some time preparing for your interviews. Remember how much time you spent preparing for your current job? Don't you think that you should spend as much time learning how to be on the other end of an interview?

Asking the right questions

More than anything else, the heart of the interview process is the questions that you ask and the answers that you receive in response. You get the best answers when you ask the best questions.

How do you ask great questions? According to Richard Nelson Bolles, author of the perennially popular What Color Is Your Parachute?, you can categorize all interview questions under the following:

• Why are you here? Why is this person interviewing with you today? You have just one way to find out — ask. You may be surprised at what you find.