How to Interview Someone When You’re the Youngest in the Room

Freelance writer Scott Mathews is back with another blog for Zenopa – Interviewing when you’re the youngest in the room.

“Organising and conducting a job interview is a serious task because you want to hire the most promising candidates only. The issue is getting increasingly important if you think about the talent shortage – almost 30% of recruiters say candidates don’t have either the interpersonal aptitude or job skills they’re looking for.

It obviously takes quite some time to analyse resumes and prepare the right questions to squeeze out the necessary answers out of your applicants. But if you are a young recruiter who lacks professional experience, you might be struggling to find the right approach.

Why is it such a big deal?

First of all, you want to leave a good impression on job candidates and prove that you have the authority needed to evaluate their skills and knowledge. You want them to take you seriously and avoid possible underestimations simply because of the age difference.

Secondly, you are representing the entire organisation. If you don’t look serious enough, job seekers might change their minds and reject the offer because they don’t trust the company with such a young and under performing recruiter.

But don’t let these problems discourage you. The only thing you need to do is to be ready to act professionally and prove authority during the interview. In this post, we will show you seven tips on how to interview job seekers when you are the youngest person in the room.

1. Prepare for the Interview

The worst thing a recruiter could do is to enter the interviewing procedure underprepared, but it clearly happens way too often. According to the report, job interviewers take an average of six seconds to scan a resume.

Jake Gardner, a resume help specialist at Superior Papers writing service, says older HR managers don’t want to bother reading CVs, but believes their younger colleagues have to be smarter than that and prepare for each candidate thoroughly: “It will give you more than enough information to craft the right questions, while you can also use the knowledge to improvise as the conversation progresses.”

2. Remember and Emulate What Your Older Colleagues Are Doing

The next thing you should do is think about the way your more experienced colleagues are conducting interviews. Let it be the person you respect and consider to be a very successful recruiter. Think about everything from start to finish:

–          How they greet the candidate?

–          How they act and behave nonverbally?

–          What are the most common job interview questions?

–          Is there a moment of improvisation?

–          How they promise a follow-up and say goodbye?

Try to visualise all those details in your head and the real-life execution should not be a problem.

3. Ask Colleagues for Help

This tip goes hand in hand with the previous one, but it’s even simpler. Namely, you can reach out to older recruiters and ask for help.

It’s a good tactic for multiple reasons. First of all, senior HR managers can help you relax, give you a big confidence boost, and convince you that everything is going to be great. Secondly, they can share valuable suggestions on how to get ready for the interview, even if you are about to face a super-skilled and very experienced job candidate.

Keep in mind that your senior colleagues used to be in the same position a few years or decades ago. They understand how you feel, so don’t hesitate to ask for help.

4. Don’t Hesitate to Act Your Age

Young recruiters often make a simple but very annoying mistake. Namely, they are trying to behave as if they are much older and more experienced, which can turn out to be a serious blunder.

Our suggestion is to feel free to act your age. Of course, you have to be a professional who takes the job seriously, but don’t be stiff and too conventional. A little bit of fresh energy can encourage job seekers to relax and give you honest answers, thus helping you to make the recruiting decision faster and easier.

5. Don’t Talk About Your Age

Even if you cannot suppress that age-induced feeling of awkwardness and discomfort, don’t mention it during job interviews. After all, candidates don’t know your real age and probably don’t think about it all that much. Besides that, they ought to respect you simply because you earned an important position at a young age.

Professional paper writers who want to work for dissertations services and create content such as the essay services review are facing young HR managers quite frequently and say they don’t have a problem with it: “We live in the digital world where younger individuals can adapt easily and perform various positions just as productively as older professionals.”

6. Take a Walk in the Candidate’s Shoes

If you think your age is a problem, try to fend off the feeling by taking a walk in the job candidate’s shoes. Keep in mind that they are the ones being questioned here, which is always an awkward position that makes people worried and uncomfortable. You are in control, so feel free to use this fact as a confidence booster.

7. Learn from Mistakes

The last tip on our list is fairly simple – don’t fall into despair even if you do make a mistake during the interview. You cannot be fully focused 100% of the time, which means that minor blunders will happen sooner or later.

The only thing that matters is to stay calm and learn from mistakes. It’s a natural part of the learning process that each recruiter (or any other business professional for that matter) must go through in order to become highly proficient.

Conclusion

Conducting quality interviews with industry experts and business professionals can be an intimidating task, particularly for younger and inexperienced recruiters. In such circumstances, the most important thing for you is to prepare well and find the right approach for every interview.

In this article, we showed you seven tips on how to interview job seekers when you are the youngest person in the room. It’s a general framework that should help you to boost self-confidence and prove professional authority.”

Scott Matthews is a full-time HR manager and a blogger at content creation services like AssignmentMan, Australia Assignment Help, and Assignment Helper. Scott specialises in recruiting and onboarding, but his main passions are custom writing help and assignment writing help. Besides that, Scott is the father of two kids and a dedicated long-distance runner.