Interviewing: What’s Your Style?

Everyone has their own personal style.

My own style is very simple – I’m a rock-and-roll kinda guy. I’m only caught in my riding boots or my beat-up Vans skate shoes. Being the former wild child of the neighborhood (though combined with a work-hard, play-harder philosophy), I’m the type of man who enjoys the finer things in life: good tunes, good food and good friends. Like a modern-day James Dean, cruising around the cracked, pot-holed streets of Ohio on my motorcycle, which I have affectionately named “Suzie the Suzuki,” I can’t help but to feel as though I am an old soul trapped in a young man’s body – the last wanna-be greaser of the new millennium.

What does this all have to do with the topic at hand, you ask? At Incept we’ve been discussing what an interview really is: an investigative tool to obtain information or knowledge toward making an informed choice. Whether that be for employment, client assessment or another purpose, it is easy to see that there are many different ways to interview.

When it comes to the interview process, and using it as an investigative strength in your search for knowledge, it is all about picking and utilizing the style that works best for you. One of the biggest things to remember is that interviews aren’t only used to hire people, they are also used to obtain insight through questioning.

Here are a few different techniques on how to interview:

• Screening Interview

Screening interviews are typically used by companies to hire new employees. That being said it is also a great style of interview to gather information needed to make a decision quickly and efficiently. This type of interview can be done via phone, video conferencing and email. It involves asking simple and straightforward questions, making its main objective identifying possible solutions and/or candidates in a timely manner. This style is good for people with limited time and with time-oriented assignments at hand.

• Audition Interview

An audition interview is just that, a capable display of performance. This style of interview is good for interviewers who tend to be more visual learners, in the fact that they can literally see their candidate or client in their natural (or prospective) professional environment. The interviewer can then appropriately make a choice or suggestion based on watching their performance and witnessing their results.

• Tag-Team Interview

This interview is the most efficient in getting collaboration and other’s opinions on subjects or prospective candidates and involves being interviewed by more than one person. Clearly, this is a good idea because not only do you have a readily available second opinion for at-hand topic matter, but you also have another brain added to the equation that perceives circumstances in a different light, offering different professional perspectives that might not have been considered by the original interviewer. More brain power is always a positive thing to have when making an informed decision.

When it comes down to it, an interview isn’t just something a company does to hire people. It is a much larger asset (with increased importance) when used to seek knowledge. Current clients can be interviewed to see if their needs are being met, while companies can also hold a simple internal survey (an example of a screening interview) or focus group to see if there is anything culturally that needs to be changed within the organization.

There are many different styles of interviews, but as always I just wanted to ask: How have you been interviewed by past employers? What are some other approaches to interviewing that you would suggest?

Photo Credit: www.professionalsalesjobinterviews.com