How To Help Your Candidates Improve Their Interview Confidence Part 1

As a recruiter, you’re always pleased to deliver the news to a candidate that they’ve been selected for an interview. However, busy recruiters often fail to take the time to prepare their candidates for interview by sufficiently building their confidence. 

Unprepared, unconfident candidates are rarely successful, which means of course that recruiters who skip the step of building their candidate’s confidence are often unsuccessful too! 

Remember that not only is your placement fee hanging in the balance, but your reputation as a recruiter as well. Your responsibility to the candidate, client and yourself, is to ensure that your candidate walks into that interview feeling thoroughly prepared and with their head held high. 

This is such an important topic we have covered this in two parts. You can find part 2 here.

1. The Basics 

A candidate’s mind is often overflowing with stressful ‘what ifs’ of all the things that could go wrong in the interview. Most of these disastrous imaginings are hugely unnecessary, like ‘What if I’m dressed wrong’, or ‘What if I get the time wrong and miss my interview’, or ‘What if I forget the hiring manager’s name’?   

Your role as a recruiter is to build confidence by completely removing these kinds of ‘admin’ worries. Be sure to have all the details ready for them about the interview. Send them a clear email detailing time and place, required dress code, the people on the panel, contact details, and what kind of interview format they’ll be facing (behavioural/unstructured etc).  

Go through a pre-interview checklist, such as telling them to practice or plan the route so there’s no delay on the day, and preparing their outfit several days ahead so they can check for stains on collars, hems that need mending, or shoes that need polishing. All of these steps create space in the mind to concentrate on what really matters. 

2. Begin Operation Preparation! 

The key to confidence isn’t motivational speeches or listening to the right podcast. It’s preparation, pure and simple. And here’s where you can help—you know interviews back to front! 

Take the time to run through possible questions they’ll face, and host a mini mock interview to gauge their pressure points, where they waffle on or talk too fast, and where they need a bit more detail and precise examples. Tell them to aim their answers at around the 2 minute mark, and advise them to practice more at home.  

Common sticking points might be explaining why they left their last job, what their 5 year plan is, or what they believe their biggest strengths and weaknesses to be. Also ask them to prepare a loose answer to the question ‘Why do you want to work here’, as it’s almost a dead cert they’ll be asked it.  

Proof matters. You must impress upon the candidate the importance of providing specific examples of times they’ve succeeded, preferably with quantifiable results to back up their claims.  

Tell them to let their human side show. So many candidates get so caught up in trying to present as the ‘perfect’ candidate, that they don’t come across as real, fun, enthusiastic people that the hiring manager will want to work with. A genuine smile and a laugh goes a long way to creating rapport.  

Make sure they know it’s ok to take a minute to think about their answers! People often feel panicked and the need to fill the silence instantly in this kind of situation, but counsel them to take a deep breath and collecting their thoughts before answering. And tell them not to be shy about asking for clarification or to repeat the question. 

Ask the candidate to prepare some questions to ask at the end. They don’t need to ask about the minutiae of the job, instead asking good questions about culture, everyday responsibilities, and career progression that shows they’re in it for the long haul.  

Tell them they can take a notebook into the interview with a few very brief notes, in case they get stuck. If they lose track of their thoughts due to panic or just want a refresher, they will get huge confidence from knowing they have a cheat sheet in their hands. And generally the hiring panel will be impressed with the candidate’s level of preparation.  

Until next time,  

Cheryl