We always tell candidates to make sure they’re doing everything they can to create a great first impression. As a company, are you creating the perfect candidate experience for your potential new hire? It sometimes appears as though, from the attitude and actions of the interviewer, that they are doing the candidate a favor by interviewing them. When in reality, the candidate may be a ‘rock star’ of an employee and is actually doing us the bigger favor by choosing our company as a potential place to work.
If the potential new hire is indeed a rock star of an employee, he or she should be interviewing you and your company, just as much as you are interviewing them.
The First Impression you present on behalf of your company may make or break the overall candidate experience:
Guidelines on creating a good first impression to improve the candidate experience:
- Were you on time for the interview, or did you leave the interviewee waiting because you had something ‘important’ to do?
- Did you make eye contact and offer the candidate a nice firm handshake?
- Was your body language welcoming?
- Is your office neat, clean and welcoming?
- Did you give the interviewee your full attention during your time together, or were you distracted thinking ‘I have 10 more of these to make it through’? And by the way, is it 5 o’clock yet?
- Was it obvious that you were reading a ‘script’ of questions, or did you try to make the candidate feel as though you were really asking about him or her and their experience?
- Did you share professional history, or information, about the team to help the candidate get an idea of whom they would be working with if selected?
- Were you polite to your co-workers in front of the candidate?
- Is it obvious that your company provides not only great external customer service, but also great internal customer service amongst coworkers?
- Did you communicate clearly expectations and anticipated timeline of the interview process?
And yes, YOU as the interviewer hold most of the cards, but you don’t want that perfect new hire to slip through the cracks because you made a bad first impression for the company.
