In the third edition of his book Creative Interviewing author Ken Metzler notes that his surveys of journalism students over the years uncovered two distinct sets of problems...ones that novice interviewers knew about and others that they did not. Recruiters - much like journalists - can become better interviewers by taking inventory of their strengths and weaknesses through self awareness or self reflection exercises.

Understanding what problems - obvious or not - are handcuffing your candidate interviews is the first step to creating a best practice interview process. The journalism students who participated in his surveys cited lack of confidence, incomplete information, poor note taking, not knowing what questions to ask, and dealing with taciturn and nonstop talkers as some of the obvious challenges they faced with interviews.

Add to these the not so obvious problems -failure to listen, lack of preparation, failure to probe, dogmatism - and you have a perfect storm of interview failure approaching. Over the next few weeks we will address some of the strategies and tactics recruiters can use to sail away from the interview storm, with the hopes of finding a safe harbor as a best in class interviewer.