what to do when candidates don’t respond to interview invitations by Alison Green on February 26, 2020 A reader writes: When I’m hiring, I email the applicants I’m interested in with an invitation to set up a phone interview. That usually works fine, but some applicants simply never respond to the request. After what I think is a reasonable amount of time (at least one week), I have been sending an email […] Read the full article →
I ask candidates their salary expectations and don’t feel bad about it by Alison Green on February 19, 2020 A reader writes: You regularly talk about how inappropriate it is for employers to ask candidates about their salary expectations without giving any salary information out themselves. Well, I am a medical professional, and, along with my partners, employ two staff in our small office. I became a small business owner/employer having received no training […] Read the full article →
should we ask candidates their salary expectations ahead of interviews? by Alison Green on February 10, 2020 A reader writes: I work in HR and am somewhat new to the field. Part of my job is managing recruitment. When I receive a promising resume, I will email the candidate to arrange a phone interview. In that first email, I ask, “What are your salary expectations?” If the person replies, “I am looking […] Read the full article →
should I reject job candidates by phone or email? by Alison Green on February 3, 2020 A reader writes: Should you always call to let a candidate know that they won’t be getting a job offer? Here’s the context: I’ve gotten calls and emails letting me know when I wasn’t accepted for a position. And my colleagues and I all agree that we hate getting phone calls. It’s awkward! If you […] Read the full article →
we offered someone a job — and then he got a bad reference by Alison Green on February 3, 2020 A reader writes: We recently offered a new employee a job, with a job offer email that included the following line: “The position is permanent and will be subject to a three-month probationary period and reference check.” We made the offer contingent on references because one of his references was his current employer and he […] Read the full article →
how should I handle job candidates who cut me off, are long-winded, or answer the wrong question? by Alison Green on January 30, 2020 A reader writes: I’ve just finished up *yet another* interview where I haven’t been able to get to all my questions because the candidates just. keep. talking. I’m female and in a technical field. I am not, by any stretch, a shrinking violet. The candidates guilty of this behavior are all men. At this point, […] Read the full article →
one of the managers who reports to me only hires conventionally attractive people by Alison Green on November 25, 2019 A reader writes: I’m pretty confident one of the managers who reports to me is (consciously or not) biased towards hiring really good-looking people. He’s hired just under a dozen folks over the last year, and to a person, those hires are extremely attractive women (and one man who made an early-career switch away from […] Read the full article →
how to interview job candidates who won’t stop talking by Alison Green on October 14, 2019 A reader writes: While I try to be understanding of job candidates who give five-minute responses to interview questions that should never ever take that long to answer, I just can’t get past it, and it makes me want to fidget uncomfortably. Would it be rude to put specific time limits on their answers, like […] Read the full article →
a job candidate tried to give us a presentation we didn’t want by Alison Green on October 8, 2019 A reader writes: I’m a manager at a large organization and am almost always is the midst of a recruitment process for one role or another. Our organization is big on diversity and inclusion and so our hiring and interview guides are built to stop as much bias from creeping in as possible. In practice, […] Read the full article →
these are the most important things I want you to know about being a good interviewer by Alison Green on October 1, 2019 So, you want to be a good interviewer. Maybe it’s your first time hiring people, or maybe you’ve been doing it for a while with less than stellar results. Maybe you’ve had your own terrible interviewers and want to make sure you don’t inflict that on someone else – or inflict bad hires on your […] Read the full article →