How to be a master interviewer for your Business

There are many different ways you can interview when looking for a new Personal Assistant and being aware of the pitfalls of each one is important before deciding which to use in your armour for finding the right PA for you.

Telephone Interviews

A good idea to use as a screening tool if your new Personal Assistant will be speaking with important stakeholders within the business or if you are looking for someone who has the ability to connect quickly with a fellow human being without the benefit of seeing them face-to-face.

Set a time and stick to it – the candidate will be ready at the specified time with signal and privacy so do your best to call when you say you are going to. If you are doing more than one, have a series of questions to pose to each candidate and rather than taking notes, listen and let the conversation flow.

Skype Calls

Becoming more and more popular and I think a rather hard interview to get right on either side. Practice makes perfect with this one. Choose your environment/back drop wisely and be mindful as to the impression you are creating for the candidate. Smile and try to be as natural as possible. Remember that the Personal Assistant will be interviewing you just as much as you will be them.

Panel Interview

Usually with this type of interview the panel will each have a different agenda and sometimes adopt different roles – the encourager, the notetaker, the interrogator, the I am not going to smile at all-er, just make sure your management team is balanced and fair. This is probably the most intimidating of interviews and sometimes used when a PA will be supporting more than one senior director within the business.

Assessment days

Great for comparing a large number of similar candidates and used a lot within graduate recruitment. Over the course of the day you can cover many different interview tools so they are very useful in narrowing down a large pool. If done well, assessment days are great for corporate branding. They need to be extremely well planned and executed otherwise chaos ensues.

Meet the team drinks

Usually used as the last step in an interview process where the overall team fit is essential or when some individuals need to be persuaded on a candidate. This is an opportunity to see the candidate in a relaxed setting and how well they cope interacting with a larger group. Great observation time, particularly if they have had a glass of wine…

Contact Attic Recruitment today to find out more about our recruitment services.

Written by Kirsty Miall – Attic Recruitment Co Founder