Interview Tips for Behavioral Health Positions
Mental health jobs are among the most important in healthcare. They’re also among the toughest positions to fill. How can you ensure you identify the right candidates in interview?
We are witnessing a global mental and behavioral crisis further exacerbated by the pandemic. Interviewing your candidates for mental health jobs accurately – to ensure the most talented individual joins your organization – has never been more critical.
Keep reading to learn the best strategies for screening candidates, structuring interviews, asking questions, and assessing responses. This will help ensure that you identify the best candidates to fill your mental health roles.
Best Practices for Conducting Interviews for Mental Health Jobs
As you are assessing a candidate during an interview, they’re also assessing you. Represent your organization in a positive way by being professional and well-prepared.
Pre-Screening Candidates
Reviewing resumes is the first way to narrow the pool of applicants. Pre-screening the remaining candidates can further reduce the field. A brief telephone interview allows you to clarify information from their resume and confirm their availability. Depending on what you learn, you may choose to remove some candidates from further consideration.
Structuring the Interview
There is no perfect way to structure an interview, but most follow a similar format:
- Introduce yourself and explain how the interview will progress
- Describe the job and its responsibilities
- Ask each of your questions
- Follow up on responses where you need clarification
- Allow the candidate to ask questions
- Provide a timeline for when you expect to make a hiring decision
Asking Questions
Use the job description to craft questions intended to assess each required skill. Open-ended questions are preferred, as they help you to gauge the candidate’s communication, motivation, and personality.
Behavioral questions are ideal for mental health jobs, as they allow you to see how a candidate reacts to real-world scenarios. “Tell me about a time you used de-escalation techniques” provides more insight than a close-ended question about whether they’ve completed training in de-escalation.
Preparing questions in advance shouldn’t prevent you from asking follow-up questions when you require clarification.
Assessing Responses
Some candidates are stronger in interviews than others, but that doesn’t mean they’re better qualified. Your assessment will remain objective if you score responses using this method:
- Identify the required skills – use the job description as a guide to identify the skills required for the position. Rank their importance from least important (1) to most important (5).
- Develop a list of questions – ensure that at least one question corresponds with each required skill.
- Score each response – score the candidate’s answer from weak (1) to strong (5). Add a few notes to remind you of their response.
- Rank each candidate – multiply the applicant’s score for each question by its importance. This is their weighted score. Tally the total to achieve a score for each candidate.
Choosing a Candidate
An applicant can have the right experience and skills but be the wrong fit for your company culture. You can train a person for specific skills, but you’ll struggle to change a bad fit.
If you’re undecided between two candidates, what’s holding you back? Schedule a follow-up interview if there’s specific information you still need to discern.
For the candidates who are not selected, thank them for their time and interest. If they feel positive about the experience, they may apply for other mental health jobs that your organization has available.
Avoiding Allegations of Discrimination
Throughout the interview process, be wary of small talk that can inadvertently bring up the candidate’s family life, age, or religion. These categories – and several others – are protected under anti-discrimination laws. Even if you have no bad intent, you’re susceptible to allegations if these are raised during an interview.
Interview Quality Candidates Only for Mental Health Jobs
Interviewing is a skill that requires time, practice, and resources. If you’re lacking in any of these, your interviewing process will suffer, and the best candidates might elude you. The expert knowledge of a staffing agency, such as LoyalSource, can help. We offer services to help businesses during every step of the hiring process. Contact us to discuss your needs.