How To Identify The Strengths And Weaknesses Of A Candidate In An Interview?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There is a saying "the theater begins with a hanger." A good and strong team can only be created through the right selection. And the second point of this saying is that the effectiveness of people depends on the type of activity that they perform. It's about functionality and responsibilities. If your people’s job responsibilities are aligned with their strengths and natural talents, then you can assume that you have an effective and motivated team.

As you know, there is material and non-material motivation. So recently, there is an opinion that non-material motivation motivates people to perform their duties much more effectively. Here we mean that people are most successful in their work, relying on talents, strengths, talents. The employee performs better what comes to him most easily, what he does with pleasure, in this case he goes to work with pleasure. The employee himself shows initiative and is perfectly motivated, which greatly simplifies the work of the manager. For HR, it is precisely the task of identifying these strengths and weaknesses of the employee in the interview in order to assemble the necessary team. For this, the first step is to describe the competencies of the vacancy as clearly as possible. Further, be clearly guided by the approved competencies, without deviating in their search from the intended "ideal" of the employee. For example, if you hire a sales manager, then he must be an extrovert, and if you are in front of an introvert, then no matter how good a specialist he is, he will most likely find it difficult to work with clients.

In interviews, various techniques are used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of candidates, and even a few correctly asked questions can help to easily identify the candidate's talents.

At the interview, firstly, it is recommended to leave the classic survey and move on to a more confidential conversation. The task of HR is to make a person talk and, of course, initially show respect for him, show him that they are really interested in him, and all in order to bring the employee into a trusting mood and help him to relax. It is better to start the conversation not immediately with the case, but to talk a little about something detached. Then you can use the techniques.

One of the rather successful techniques is the LIVE coaching MODEL

L - What do I love?

I - What are my talents and strengths?

V - What is valuable to me?

E - What is the environment that helps me to discover my talents in me?

It can be taken as a basis for conducting an interview, as a support. Based on it, you can systematically get an overall picture of a potential employee. It will become clear to you what motivates him, what environment is important to him, what functionality will help him to open up and work effectively. This model can be built into the interview.

Or another useful method: the STAR system - the situation, the task that had to be solved, the achievements and the result. That is, it is quite effective when HR simply asks to tell a person about some difficult situations in his work that he faced, and about ways of solving these situations. Here he will most likely tell the previously prepared text. Exactly how and if you ask him to talk about his strengths. But you can reveal his real character traits, such as they really are, exactly like his strengths, by asking him to return to childhood and tell what he loved to do, what he loved to play, how he spent his time. You can also ask what he, in principle, would like to do in life, if he did not have to earn money. And here's a little trick, you can ask the person to teach you what he is especially good at. If a person says that he cannot teach you or he has some difficulties with this, then most likely this is his main talent. Since talent is given to us from above, this is something that we do well without prior training, by nature. It is also worth asking what books he likes to read, what films he likes to watch. Understanding taste preferences for films and books will help you determine what values a person has, what is important to him in life. Asking them about the books they have read recently will help you identify their favorite areas and topics, especially business books. It will immediately become clear what a person is fond of, and in what area he is developing.

If we talk about the weaknesses of the candidate, then, of course, you can directly ask about them, but not everyone here likes to talk about it. And it would be better to put the question like this: ask what the candidate would like to improve in himself, what areas of responsibility to develop. In my opinion, it makes no sense to pay attention to weaknesses, because there are no ideal people. In addition, there is an opinion that it is not worth touching them at all, it is much more effective to develop your strengths. Today, many parents pay more attention to those subjects where the child likes to learn and where they are good at. It is better to spend energy "for pleasure" and strengthen your favorite subject than to pull up mathematics with the last bit of strength, which the child does not really like.