What Is Conducting Interviews and Why Is It Important to Conduct an Interview Right in the Hiring Process?

Maybe remember the nasty thirteen car pile up in July.

Maybe heard about little Rachel Beckworth severed spinal

chord and how the family said their goodbyes and took off her life support.

And perhaps you heard about a birthday wish that became a sensation.Instead

of presents, Rachel had asked for donations to an organization called "Charity Water"

which provides clean water for children in developing countries.Her modest goal was $300

After she died, the story of her wish resonated and soon there were

donations pouring in to Charity Water from all over the world. A million

dollars later, all of us were mazed."She would be so happy and just so amazed

that she helped people because she ... did that on a daily basis in our lives, so, she's jumping

up and down in heaven right now", commented Cortnie Patterson , Rachel's relative.

And now the gift of Rachel Beckworth continues in a new way. Her organs were

donated after she died and an Auckland man named 'Mark' now has her kidney

inside of him keeping him alive. He'd been in the transplant list for five long years

"I received a gift that you can't even describe how big it was", said Mark.

Rachel's story lives on proving just how much one life cana mean to so many others.

Knowing that a child, young child past away and the family made available this organ for me

is really just almost too much emotionally...

..

Welcome to Veterinary Success Services, success on wheels, a monthly program on How-To. I'm Dr. Peter Weinstein, I'm here with my partner Dr. Steven Kornfeld. This month's discussion is on How to Conduct an Interview. Welcome,Steve!

Dr. Korfeld: Thank you, Peter. What is conducting interviews and why is it important to conduct an interview right in the hiring process?

Dr. Weinstein: Having screened the applications and resumes, you now have a selected group of individuals who met the criterion for what you are looking and it's now time to separate those people who look good on paper from those people who can present themselves in a fashion that will impress your client and be able to the level of care and services that you're looking to deliver. The importance of the interview is to help you clearly identify by meeting with an individual that they have the skills, attributes, and knowledge that you're looking to provide your clients. Most importantly, as noted in the wording of the question, it's doing in an interview correctly that will help you do that.

Steve: And that's what we're gonna be discussing and teaching you today. Who should be interviewing and who should be involved in the interviewing process?

Peter: Well, I think there are a lot of different ways and practices have their own philosophies. In my practice, we are used to hiring team which was compose of different individuals from different positions within the practice depending upon whether you're hiring for client service or technician or even a veterinarian. We would have different people on the hiring team usually three individuals did not include the owner, may or many not have included the manager and they were involved with the interview process. There are some practices that actually do the one-on-one interview and there are others that do the 3-on-one. Philosophically, after a while, I found out that is much more effective to have multiple people involve with the interview process rather than just an individual. What are your thoughts on that, Steve?

Steve: My thought is when we conduct the individual interviews; we are influenced and affected by other causes that may not even be in our conscious mind. We maybe influenced by how we feel about this candidate from the get-go before we even get the chance to talk to her or him and many times we tend to make wrong decisions. So, a hiring team will eliminate this process especially if the interview itself has been planned in advance, has been structured to eliminate the emotional setup in the decision process. There has to be a logical process and it has to be structured in advance to eliminate mistakes. Because, Peter, you and I know that staff retention starts with staff hiring.

Peter: Absolutely. The hiring team; there's a term called interviewer bias; the hiring team by having 3 people there eliminate any individual who may have a bias or against the candidate that's being considered. In many cases if you're doing a one-on-one, you can't avoid the bias but with 3 people, one person's weight can be superseded by 2 others' assessments. Steve's comment on hiring correctly would actually eventually lead to long-term retention of staff which is imperative right now in the current working environment, in the current business environment in which we're working. So, Steve, when in the whole hiring process in the system associated with the hiring of an individual? You wanna give me some of the steps - when or where the interview should be conducted.

Steve: The interview process; because it is more costly because it involves a lot of people; should come after the initial screening of candidates. Nowadays, because of the economy, you may get a flood of applications. We've already covered on the previous call how to screen them out. You need to decide as part of the hiring system how many people you are going to interview. If you have time, interview more. If you don't have enough time, then interview few people. You need to decide how many people you want to interview as they get-go unless, it doesn't change of course. Then, after you've screened out the individuals in the application process then you invite them in the interview process. The interview process has to be carried out in the very early stage of the hiring process.

Peter: What you're trying to do is you're trying to take a funnel and all the resumes that are coming at the top of the funnel and the better candidates come down through the narrow end of the funnel and those who go into the interview process and that group again will be narrowed for some final processes down the road but you're