Hi, my name is Candice Elliot, and I am a human resources strategist. In this video, we're going to talk about your interview style. There are two main ways that I have seen employers go about interviewing.

One of them is kind of, "Prove yourself to me." It's an interview style where you're intentionally holding yourself back. You're asking the interviewee really hard questions. You're trying to sort of make them prove themselves, like, "What's your experience? Tell me about it. How does it apply to this position? What are you going to bring to my company? Why should I spend my time and my energy and my money on you?" basically. That's one way of doing interviewing.

Another way of doing interviewing is more friendly and you're more getting to know who the person is, what their background is, what their opinions are on certain things, and sort of welcoming them into the company and using the interview as a way of doing that. There are pros and cons to each of these styles. I tend to interview more with the prove-yourself-to-me style. When someone's going through an interview process with me, they're usually one of a number of different candidates.

When it comes to declining candidates who had a good shot at the position but just weren't the right fit because I use an interview style that has more of this prove-yourself-to-me attitude to it, it's less heartbreaking, [00:02:00] a little bit, for them on the declining end. It doesn't give people at least any false hope that they're going to get the position if they're one of many candidates who might end up in the position.

On the other side, once you end up choosing a candidate after you've had them go through a more difficult interview process, they feel more like they are special and that they've been chosen for the position, that they're not just like any person and not just anyone could do the job, that they were actually chosen for the job because of their background and their experience and their ability to comport themselves and act professionally.

If you decide to go with more of a friendly interview style, just be sure that when you do decline your candidates, that you actually tell them, "Thank you for applying for the position. I really enjoyed getting to know you, but unfortunately we have a more qualified candidate," or something to that effect. If you're going with that style, sometimes people who we are able to develop friendly relationships with are different kinds of people than who are very effective employees for us. Just keep that in mind as you're going through the interview process.

You're not interviewing someone to be your friend, you're interviewing someone to work for you, and that comes with a different kind of a relationship. Consider that as you're deciding whether to move forward with a more friendly interview approach or the more of a show yourself, prove yourself to me. Thank you for listening to [00:04:00] this video. If there's anything we can do to help you interview, please reach out. We are happy to help.