Effective Job Interview Exercises

Effective Job Interview Exercises

Hiring can be a time-intensive, challenging process, but it's one of the most important things a leader will do. But as you're sorting through a stack of candidates, it can be tough to narrow down the best people for any job opening. Once you've come up with a shortlist, you then have to start interviewing.

To boost their effectiveness, many hiring managers have now begun to look for inventive alternatives to traditional interview practices. Although you can still use the question-and-answer format, here are a few useful exercises that you can work in during your next round of interviews.

Moving Motivators

Moving Motivators is a fun, interactive exercise that can help you get to the heart of a candidate's personality. The exercise is based on the ten intrinsic desires. Different people are motivated by different desires, which motivates how they react to various situations. Here are the ten moving motivators:

• Relatedness
• Status
• Curiosity
• Acceptance
• Goal
• Power
• Freedom
• Honor
• Mastery
• Order

You don't even have to create your own materials to put this exercise into practice. Simply download the cards for free on the company's website .

Job Simulations

No matter how many questions you ask, you won't really know the type of employee a candidate will be until the first day of work. By then, you've already ended the interview process and made a commitment to work with the person.

Job simulations can be a great way to test out each candidate to get a feel for what you can expect. Candidates may be asked to do a quick project using the company software or answer a phone call if it's a customer support job. This may not work for all positions, but it's a great fit for some roles.

Practical Tasks

Another great way to assess how an employee will tackle various job challenges is to use simple tasks. One possibility is to give candidates a puzzle of some type, such as building blocks. As you watch how each candidate handles the same assignment, you can determine how they fit into your existing business structure.

Instead of puzzles, you could engage candidates in role-playing exercises. Set up a scenario similar to what the candidate would deal with in the workplace and have an interviewer or a team member play the other role. Using this exercise, you can determine a candidate's skills at leadership, customer service, and problem solving, among others.

If you're hiring, Express Pros can help. We recruit top candidates in professional, light industrial, and office services, and we can connect you with qualified full-time, temporary, or part-time employees. Call us at (615) 441-8898 to find out how we can help you.