Interviewing

Once you’ve filtered through the responses to your job posting and found some promising candidates, it’s time to take the hiring process to the next level: interviewing. There are two stages of interviewing to find the ideal person for your practice: telephone screening and in-person interviewing--in that order. Let’s see what’s involved in these.

Step 1: Telephone Screening

Telephone screening is an essential first step. This helps you sift out the not-so-good fits and identify the most promising people. If you take care with your telephone screening, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and effort when it comes to the in-person interviewing.

What are the elements of a telephone screening?

• Time: Keep the conversation to 10-15 minutes maximum.
• Terms:
  • State the purpose of the call.
  • Say how long you expect it to last, and ask if this is a convenient time for the candidate to talk. If not, set up a future phone appointment--make sure the candidate can give you their full attention and isn’t distracted.
  • Provide an abbreviated job description, including expectations and hours.
  • Give the next steps.
• Topics:
  • Develop a telephone interview sheet with a standard set of questions for all applicants--remember, you want to compare apples to apples.
  • Take notes about the candidate’s responses on your interview sheet.
  • Ask one behavioral question that would let you see how the candidate would respond to a situation that comes up often in your practice. The rest of your questions can be straightforward so you stay within your time frame.
  • Ask about their salary expectations. If what they want or need isn’t in your range, then there’s no point in continuing the conversation or moving on to the in-person interview. (Honestly, it’s easiest to include a salary range in your job posting so you can save their time as well as your own.)

This is so important that we’ll say it again: It’s vital that you handle all calls the same--ask the same questions and provide the same information. This is the only way you can accurately compare candidates. It will be challenging enough to make an apple-to-apple comparison; you don’t want to find yourself trying to compare an apple to a pineapple!

Here’s a quick tip: The question "Why are you applying for this particular job?" is always a good one to ask. It lets you see if the candidate has done his or her homework and cared enough to learn about your practice.

Just as with any type of interview, nerves are bound to play a role in a telephone interview too. So you’ll want to allow some leeway for that. However, be wary if the person seems too talkative, too quiet, can’t carry on a conversation, interrupts constantly, lacks enthusiasm, or has an unprofessional voicemail message. If an internal warning flag goes up, pay attention to that.

Step 2: In-person Interviewing

Just as with your telephone screening, you want to use the same interview questions with each candidate for consistency and comparability.

You can even expand the telephone interview sheet for your in-person interviews so you have the exact same questions for each candidate, as well as a place to take notes.

With the in-person interview, you can go deeper and broader with your questions. Definitely include questions that elicit answers revealing a candidate’s attitude, customer service skills, and teamwork abilities. These are especially crucial for a successful hire. Remember, you can usually teach skills if you need to, but you can rarely change someone’s personality. A person may look technically stellar, but if they’re not a good fit with your team, steer clear.

Where you only asked one behavioral question with the telephone screening, you’ll want to ask more of these types of questions in person. Start with a behavioral question, and dig deeper with follow-up questions, such as “tell me more about that” or “what did you learn from that?” You can learn a lot about the candidate’s attitudes and behaviors when you go beyond the standard questions.

It may be helpful to brainstorm with your team to come up with situations you all often run into with patients or other staff. To help you get started creating a list of questions, take a look at this article: Great Interview Questions for Allergy Staff.

Also, you’ll need to make sure to keep all your questions legal. Never ask a candidate questions about these:

• Age
• Gender/sex
• Marital/family status or pregnancy
• Race or ethnicity
• National origin or birthplace
• Sexual orientation
• Disability/physical or mental health
• Religion
• Political affiliation
• Military discharge status
• Arrest record
• Drugs, alcohol, smoking

Now, you still need to make sure the candidate doesn’t have any restrictions that would prevent him or her from meeting the job requirements. So you can ask specific questions like these, which pertain to a person’s schedule or physical abilities, while still keeping everything legal:

• “The hours for this position vary, but you’ll be required to work some evenings until 7:00 p.m. and one Saturday a month. Is there any reason you wouldn’t be able to meet these requirements?”
• “This position requires the ability to lift up to 10 pounds. Can you meet this requirement?”
• “This position is required to open the office at 7:15 a.m. on Mondays once per month. Are you able to meet that requirement?”

As important as your questions are, remember that the point of the interview is to let the candidate do most of the talking. You’re trying to get to know him or her as best you can in a short amount of time. So try to rein in any paparazzi tendencies you might have!

And finally, make sure the candidate understands and agrees to all the job requirements. This includes the schedule, hours, responsibilities, location, and so forth. Be sure to address any areas you’ve had problems with in the past up front.

Sources (provided by ACAAI):

• ACAAI, "Great Interview Questions for Allergy Staff"
• Insight Global Social Recruiting Statistics