How To Train Hiring Managers To Interview

What Is Interview Training

JazzHR | How to Train your Hiring Managers

Interview training refers to learning opportunities and professional development that improves your capacity to conduct effective and productive interviews. These offerings provide relevant information to hiring managers on how to conduct interviews in the best possible way. Interview training may be offered by a company directly or by a third party training provider, depending on the circumstances.

Hold Hiring Managers Accountablerate Them Confront Bad Behavior And Reward Ownership

Too often, hiring managers arent at all accountable for how well they partner with recruiting. Hiring stats arent usually a part of hiring managers performance reviewsbut thats Johns fantasy. You might not be able to make that change overnight, but you can hold hiring managers more accountable.

Managers often fill out surveys on recruiters, but recruiters can also start filling out surveys on hiring managers. You can then share those results with the hiring managers to give constructive feedback.

For the stellar hiring managers, John recommends emailing their boss to say thank you. When John did exactly that, his email made it into the managers performance reviewhiring goals were even integrated into his performance review for the year . The manager wasnt necessarily thrilled about the new responsibility, but John sure was.

He also recommends writing LinkedIn recommendations for helpful recruiting managers. Recruiters dont recognize and reward hiring managers enough, John says, and this five-minute gesture can really show your appreciation.

General Interview Questions For Training Managers

General interview questions establish a comfortable conversation and help your potential employer better understand you. Common general interview questions include:

Tell me about yourself.
What college did you attend?
What motivates your current job search?
Are you currently employed?
How did you hear about our company?
What are you looking for in your next opportunity?
What do you like to do when not at work?
Why do you enjoy working as a training manager?
What’s your greatest weakness?
What’s your greatest strength?

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Focus On Candidate Engagement

In a candidate-driven market like this one, hiring leaders should assume that job seekers are interviewing with multiple companies and when thats the reality, the engagement a candidate gets from your team could be just the advantage you need.

A focus on continuous candidate engagement will give you:

Faster turnaround on hiring decisions
More high-quality talent in your pipeline
A higher number of engaged candidates
A larger pool of more diverse candidates
More candidates that turn into customers

To level up your candidate engagement, train interviewers to treat your candidates like your customers by giving them the power toself-schedule their interviews, and giving them plenty of quality feedback throughout the hiring processeven if they dont get the job.

While candidates who dont win the job may be disappointed, nothing is worse than waiting too long to find out. Not only does hanging in limbo directly affect the candidate experience, but it also damages the employer brand.

On the flip side, hiring teams who reject candidates quickly will seriously lessen the pain of rejection, leading to better quality hires and a still-in-tact brand reputation.

Ask For Real Experiences

One common interview technique is to set forth a hypothetical situation and ask how the candidate would react to that situation. The idea is that they can analyze their process and give you the answer they would follow.

The truth is, they will often simply make up what they think you would want to hear. Particularly for stressful situations, how an individual reacts is rarely logical or thought out. Instead of asking a hypothetical, ask about their work experiences and how they handled them.

Dont ask hypothetical questions because people make up the answer. Instead, ask for specific situations. For example, dont ask, What would you do if a customer gets angry on the phone? Instead, ask, Tell me of a time when someone got mad at you what did you do?’ Bob Legge, President of Legge & Company, LLC

Start Building Hiring Skills Into The Hiring Criteria For Your Company

Recruiters love to complain about bad hiring managers, which always strikes John as weird. Geez, if only we had some influence over, I dont know, hiring better hiring managers, he says jokingly.

Recruiters have the power to make hiring experience and recruiting capability part of the criteria thats used to evaluate candidates. Not only will you end up hiring better hiring managersitll also impact existing managers, reinforcing the idea that recruiting is a core part of your culture.

Understand The Position On Offer

To pick the best candidate for a role, you need to understand the role and all it entails. You should discuss the position with present workers and the relevant departmental head. This ensures that you can identify candidates that meet this role’s technical demands and fit into the team.

This also ensures that you give candidates reliable information on what the role entails. You leave them well-informed and make their onboarding process easy.

Also Check: How To Record An Interview For A Podcast

How Would You Determine Our Most Urgent Training Needs

Your interviewer wants to understand how you’d identify important areas for their company’s improvement and how you’d respond to them. Your response should highlight how you gather information and develop training strategies.

Example answer:”**When entering a new company, I know I have to find the inefficiencies that result from the training process. I value insights from both management and the team, so I use a mix of surveys, one-on-one interviews and data analysis to determine the most pressing issues. I make sure the rest of management approves of the trouble areas I want to address and then develop a timeline for introducing solutions. This enables me to move forward with facts, the organization’s needs and employees’ feelings as top priorities.”

Experience And Background Questions For Training Managers

8 Smart Questions To Ask Hiring Managers In A Job Interview

Your interviewer likely wants to review your experience as a training manager. Questions an employer might ask to determine if your background qualifies you for the job include:

Describe the typical workday at your last job.
How large were the companies for which you previously worked?
Do you have particular experience with one industry?
How long have you worked as a training manager?
Why did you initially pursue a career in training management?
Do you have references who can speak to your qualifications?
Have you had to train managers to whom you report?
What influences your approach to building training programs?
Have you implemented feedback systems for employees to use?
Do you have any relevant certifications in training management?

Also Check: What Is An Exit Interview

Tips For A Successful Interview With A Hiring Manager

An interview is a crucial step in the hiring process. To impress the hiring manager, convey yourself as a confident, qualified candidate. Learning the right techniques will help you prepare and understand what key messages to bring up during the interview. In this article, we explain what hiring managers look for in candidates and provide 12 tips to help you deliver a successful interview with a hiring manager.

How To Get Hiring Managers Involved In The Collaborative Hiring Process

Techniques for engaging your hiring manager will obviously vary on a case-by-case basis. No one person is exactly the same, so your approach for each new requisition might need to adapt accordingly.

Overall though, your strategy should ensure a clear and consistent line of communication, and assurances that your hiring team is there to help and drive the process forward where needed.

With that in mind, here are some techniques you can use when you want hiring managers to get involved in the collaborative hiring process:

As you can see, getting hiring managers to take part in the collaborative hiring process is all about team work and communication.

Your hiring manager is a fundamental part of your team, and everyone involved in the process should take ownership of the result.

Managing expectations and processes early on is the best way to ensure that your hiring team knocks it out of the park on each and every new hire.

Brendan is an established writer, content marketer and SEO manager with extensive experience writing about HR tech, information visualization, mind mapping, and all things B2B and SaaS. As a former journalist, he’s always looking for new topics and industries to write about and explore.

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What Is A Hiring Manager

As mentioned, the hiring manager is the person within your organization who requests that a new position be filled. They are the driver behind a new requisition being created and are the go-to person for information about requirements and expectations.

They also have the ultimate say over which candidate is hired at the end of the recruitment process.

Because of this, hiring managers are expected to participate actively in each stage of the hiring process.

Creating A Consistent Candidate Experience

Mastering Interviewing Techniques Training for Managers « Lebtivity

Providing a consistently excellent experience for candidates is vital to our employer brand, and our hiring managers carry much of the responsibility for that experience. To help create a consistent experience, we outline:

Taking the time upfront to train hiring managers on how to find and hire employees has allowed our recruiting team to delegate parts of the interview process, leaving more time for strategic initiatives, sourcing, and initial screening. Since our hiring managers know legal boundaries, stick to effective interview methods, and understand how to provide an excellent experience, theyre confident in their ability to select the best candidates for their teams.

Interview Questions For Training Managers

Related: How to Answer Behavioral Interview Questions With No Work Experience

Taylor explains how to stand out when answering behavioral interview questions even when you dont have a lot of work experience by using the STAR Method.

Preparing well for your next interview can help you secure a great opportunity as a training manager with a company that excites you. If you’re a training manager looking for your next role, you might benefit from familiarizing yourself with the questions hiring managers rely on to fill the position. In this article, we review several categories of questions training managers often answer in interviews and look at successful responses.

Who This Course Is For:

This course is for hiring managers or team members who want to better prepare themselves for interviewing and selecting the right candidates for their teams.
This course is for inexperienced interviewers who need practical tips and strategies to conduct an effective interview.
This course is not for recruiters or those who have extensive experience with the hiring or interview process.

10,560 Students
1 Course

Elizabeth Shober is Head of Talent at Udemy. She has over 20 years experience in recruiting for both agencies and in a corporate environment. In her previous role as Director of Talent at Planet, she helped to scale a unicorn tech company from 50 to 400. Currently at Udemy, her team is continuing to build the broader organization while focusing on candidate experience, efficiency, and diversity.

206,138 Students
11 Courses

The Udemy Learning Team works to create best-in-class learning experiences, both internally for Udemy employees, and externally, for Udemy students.

Our courses are focused on embracing the power of feedback, inclusive leadership, growth mindset, and change agility to foster a culture of learning on teams.

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Empower Your Hiring Managers With World

Enabling your hiring managers to excel at interviewing is your secret weapon to successful hiring and driving hiring excellence company-wide. SocialTalent’s interviewer training will give your entire company the skills to run effective interviews and ensure you hire the best talent.

Cut Through The Noise To Find Your Perfect Candidates

MANAGER Interview Questions and Answers! (How to PASS a Management Job Interview!)

Learn How To Uncover Insights That Uncover Talent

If tomorrows game-changing employee wanted to work for your company, would your interviewer sense their potential? We can teach your hiring managers to notice coveted talent and competence, while at the same time weeding out dead-end or deceptive prospects. And our methods ensure you can overcome any hiring bias your hiring managers may not be aware of. Our interview skills training will have you bringing in talent that adds long-lasting value to your organization.

Experience a personalized team workshop
Learn vital interview skills through experiential training
Build a team of competent interviewers
Develop tools to find the right candidates
Eliminate bias and embrace diversity
Master the art and science of interviewing
Create an exceptional candidate experience

Ways To Impress A Hiring Manager During An Interview

The interview is arguably the most important part of the hiring process. While it can be difficult to know what a hiring manager is looking for during an interview, taking the time to fully prepare in advance can help you feel more confident and relaxed from beginning to end.

In this article, we discuss what it is that hiring managers are looking for and 10 steps you can take to impress them during your next interview.

Let The Candidate Talk

In a conversation, particularly in a high-stakes setting like an interview, its human nature to want to fill dead air and make every moment productive. Many novice hiring managers fill the air with small talk, mention comments they should generally keep to themselves, or dominate an interview with their presence.

The truth is, its often better to suppress that instinct and let the candidate deal with the dead air themselves. Do they speak up? Do they offer relevant information, make small talk, crack jokes, or ask insightful questions? How they act in the gaps between questions can tell you a lot about them.

Dont talk too much. Its human nature to want to fill the dead air in a conversation, but one of the best ways to explore a candidates thinking is to resist the urge to fill that dead air and instead let them do so. When the human mind starts racing for things to talk about a lot of the filters get pushed aside, and thats when you see whats really behind the pre-planned answers. Rich Enos, CEO & Co-Founder of StudyPoint, Inc.

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Avoid The Standard Job Interview

Use these basic principles to avoid the common pitfalls of the interview.

A typical job interview is little more than a social call with some predictable choreography. A conference-room meeting, a pristine résumé and the standard questions: Where do you want to be in five years? What do you consider your biggest failure? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Add in some small talk maybe the candidate and the interviewer have something in common, like an alma mater or an acquaintance from an earlier job and thats largely it. The candidate seems good, and the references check out. So an offer is made, and fingers are crossed that everything works out.

Then, a month later, the new hire misses an important deadline or starts complaining about the work. Cue that sinking feeling: You start wondering if hiring this person was a mistake.

Of course theres a better way. Here are three principles that can help you hire the right person:

Be creative. Every candidate will be prepared for commonplace interview questions. Find new ways to truly understand how a person thinks.

Be challenging. Put the candidate in situations where they are more likely to show their true selves.

Allow your employees to help. You are not the only person who is going to have to work with this candidate. There is likely already a team of employees you trust that will have to interact with him or her every day. Their opinion should matter.

Dont Play Against The Candidate

When interviewing a candidate, it is important to realize that you are not playing against them but are on the same side. Do not have a stressful interview where you keep on grilling the candidate.

You can break the cycle of grilling questions with personal ones, which can involve asking about hobbies and such so that the candidate feels at ease and can respond to the questions in the best ways.

You may have to add some stress to the interview, but too much of it can be a recipe for failure. If there is a lot of stress on the candidate, they might break and be unable to answer questions they would have answered easily.

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Legal And Compliance Issues In Interviewing

Interviewing consistency is not just important for the candidate experience, it also directly impacts legal and compliance issues. At the very basic level, training for hiring managersespecially those new to the industryshould cover what cannot be discussed or asked during an interview.

In the U.S. there are specific candidate questions that managers should avoid asking because they violate specific employment laws. If your candidate is located in California or New York, it is against the law to ask questions related to salary information.

Questions asked on application forms and during interviews can create significant legal problems for employers if the questions run afoul of federal, state, and municipal laws that prohibit unlawful pre employment inquiries.

The Americans with Disabilities Act expressly prohibits disability-related pre employment inquiries made prior to extending a job offer to an applicant. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has no express prohibition, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cautions that questions concerning an applicants age, gender, race, color, religion, or national origin may be used as evidence of discrimination. Other federal laws include provisions that protect the confidentiality of an applicants medical information, prohibit hiring decisions that discourage union membership, and restrict employment decisions based on an employees financial history.