How to summarize an interview

How to summarize your background in an interview, tip #1

If you’re in the midst of job interviews, you already know that the most common interview question you’ll get is some variation on “walk me through your resume.”

Maybe it’s “please summarize your experience for me,” or “tell me a little bit about yourself,” or “explain your background for me.” But it’s all getting at the same thing.

“Why, of course!” you say.

I mean, you lived it, right?

Not so fast, career dreamer.

This seemingly innocent question is also one of the hardest to get right. Potholes, quick sand, and cliffs all await you as you verbally re-live your background or tell your interviewer “a little bit about yourself.” It’s a proper Tough Mudder obstacle course but without the mud slinging and trophies.

Assume your interviewer has never seen your resume, cover letter, or LinkedIn profile

Summarizing your background can’t be that important if the hiring manager already has your resume, right?

“But…but…” I hear you say. “C’mon, hiring manager! Stop being lazy. You have my resume and I worked on it for approximately a billion hours so just read it and you’ll know everything you need to know.”

I’m with you. As an interviewee, I hate being asked to summarize my background. But the “ just read my darn resume” attitude also once got me turned down from a job I really wanted. More on that another time perhaps.

So, now that I’ve been on the other side, I’ll let you in on a secret. Your interviewer isn’t lazy. They’re just really really REALLY busy. And distracted.

Let’s be honest. The person interviewing you — hiring manager or not — has barely looked at your resume and cover letter. They aren’t going to remember yours over any of the other hundreds they’ve looked at. Or maybe they’ve only looked at your LinkedIn profile and not your beautifully designed resume and carefully crafted cover letter. I personally rely more on LinkedIn profiles than resumes because the consistent format from profile to profile allows me to more quickly digest someone’s background.

Whatever you do, don’t start describing your experience by saying “you have my resume, so I’ll be super brief.” Instead,

But this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more on other common pitfalls you might encounter when you next get that dreaded “tell me about your background” question.

How to Summarize an Interview?

An interview, whether a celebrity interview or a candidate interview, is essential. The information obtained in such discussions is necessary and must get captured somewhere. While you could record a video clip, writing a summary of it is the most efficient way. The summary will help the reader get the essence of the interview without observing the whole discussion. It is a convenient way to collect and share information, but it needs strategies. So here is How to Summarize an Interview?

What Is an Interview Summary?

Just as the name suggests, it is the summarization of a lengthy interview into an essay. Interviews are usually detailed conversations that take place between the interviewer and the interviewee.

However, it is not practical to use the entire interview to pass on the information to others. So people usually summarize the discussion into a written summary and then share it with others.

It benefits the interviewer and interviewee as more people can access and understand the interview. Such summaries are popular in firms and even for celebrity or famous persons’ interviews.

Why Do We Need Interview Summaries?

Interview summaries are a way to understand all the proceedings in the interview. You can also do the same by watching a video recording of the interview, but it takes time and effort. Having the information organized helps you get more interested and understand the discussion better.

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Here are all the merits of an interview summary that make it desirable:

It would take you so much time and effort to get through. But if you receive concise excerpts for each candidate, you would appreciate the HR manager who created the report. It is why concise summaries are perfect and attractive to readers.

Essential Steps to Follow Before and During the Interview Itself

To make the perfect summary of an interview, you must be prepared even before the interview. Although you might have a recording of the interview to refer to later, some people might not be comfortable recording the interview.

In such cases, and usually in all cases, you must get prepared with a few steps before the interview. Such steps mentioned below will help you summarize the discussion:

Prepare A Customized Questionnaire

The first step to follow before taking any interview is to formulate the questions to get asked in the discussion. You must keep in mind your motive and the specific requirements of the interviewee to make a questionnaire.

Keep the questions to the point and try to be as polite as possible. Even if you want to touch over a sensitive but essential topic, ensure that you use polite speech and for the question well. Such questionnaires will help obtain useful information for the summary.

Keep A Notepad or Tablet with You

For interviewers, it may not always be possible to record the interviews. However, you can use the traditional way and note down the responses in that case. It is not as efficient, but if necessary, it can work well.

You can keep a device or notepad with you in which you can pre-write the questions. When the interviewee and answers them, you can note down bullets and then expand the information later on.

Try to Record the Interview

If possible, take the permission of your interviewee and record the interview. It is an essential step for firms hiring candidates. However, interviews with celebs might be different. Not everyone might agree to record the interview for reference.

You can use the above method in that case, and it is not a grave issue. But recording an interview is always ideal because you can look back at the interview and catch any essential information you may have missed the first time you noted it down.

Steps to Follow While Writing the Summary of an Interview

Now that you know what you must do while taking an interview let us go further to what you must keep in mind while making the summary. Creating a summary itself is not a complex task, but for interviews, it may be.

Interviews are conversations, so if the information is not organized well, it could lead to miscommunication. Hence, if you make a summary of an interview, you have to be careful to make an ideal summary.

Here are some steps and tricks you can follow while you summarize the interview:

Refer to The Recording or Notes

The first and most essential part of summarization would be to refer to the information. The best time to write the summary would be immediately after the interview so you can process maximum information and details.

But if you can’t do so, you can always refer to the recording or the notes of the interview multiple times. It will help you ensure that the information you pass on is accurate and the point of the interviewee gets across.

Choose Between Summary Styles

An interview summary or report can get written in two major styles of writing. The first way is the Question and Answer format, and the second way is the Narrative style. Both these styles are ideal for writing the summary.

In a Q&A format, you would write short answers to the questions the interviewee answered, so it is more detailed. However, the narrative would help you combine the overall essence of the interview and share it as a consistent story rather than individual answers.

Stay Objective

While taking the interview, you might meet a celebrity with who you disagree, or even a candidate who you know. But regardless of your personal opinions and relations with the interviewee, your report must be objective.

Even if you might disagree with a statement, you must convey it in your report just as the interviewee intended. And even if you might want the best for your acquaintance, you must only present the facts without being biased.

Keep The Audience in Mind

Now we have broadly discussed two types of interviews in our guide. The celebrity or famous persons’ interviews has the general public as an audience. At the same time, the candidate interview has your superiors as an audience.

With different audiences, you must change the tone of your summary. For the general public, a polite yet fun tone would be better to keep them engaged. But with your superiors, a serious tone would be perfect.

Re-Read the Summary

Once you have followed all the guidelines and created the summary of the interview, you must proofread it. You can also play the interview recording and check if the report has any deviations from the original point.

At this point, if you find that your statements are different, you can correct them before presenting them to someone else. It is a way to ensure that there is no miscommunication with the audience.

Conclusion

An interview summary is a concise account of the conversation in an interview. While the entire interview might be too long and detailed for everyone, a summary is convenient to read for all.

Summarizing an interview is not that difficult for an average worker. If you know how you must prepare and conduct the interview, you can make a summary too. Just ensure that you follow our tips for summarizing to get optimum results.

Frequently Asked Questions

No, it isn’t technically necessary to make a summary of an interview. The summary is optional, but it is preferred as it is convenient for other people. If you must share the data from the interview, a summary is the most convenient way to do so.

2. Is recording the interview better or summarizing it?

Both methods are efficient, and it just depends on what purpose they serve. Summaries are more comprehensible and less time taking as compared to recordings. So if you have to communicate the interview to many people, the summary is ideal.

3. Do you need the expertise to summarize interviews?

No, you do not need expertise in the work to summarize an interview. You must take care of a few preparations before the interview, and you can follow the above steps to summarize an interview.

How to Summarize an Interview

Published on 27 Dec 2018

Application Materials

During the interview, you’re likely to have the candidate’s employment application, cover letter and resume. These documents become part of a permanent record, regardless of whether you extend a job offer. Therefore, don’t make your notes or summarize any part of your interview on the official employment documents. That means don’t write on the application, the candidate’s cover letter or resume. Remembering this important rule could keep you out of hot water if you are ever required to justify your company’s employment practices.

Phone Presence

Many organizations conduct preliminary telephone interviews, which are essential for narrowing down the applicant pool to a manageable number of qualified candidates. Telephone interviews typically are brief; however, you can glean a fair amount of information from them. Summarize a phone interview by noting the applicant’s phone presence, which includes telephone etiquette and the quality of the speaking voice. Also, ask candidates for a brief work history and note whether they meet or exceed the basic job requirements.

Appearance

The face-to-face interview is where you obtain the most information. In summarizing the first in-person interview, you’re probably going to assess whether candidates have a professional appearance, but don’t spend too much of your summary describing appearances. When candidates fall short in this area, consider giving them the benefit of the doubt, especially if their qualifications exceed your expectations. If you feel that it’s appropriate, you might be able to give a candidate feedback on making a stronger appearance for a second interview.

Communication Skills

During a face-to-face interview, how a candidate responds to your questions is only one part of the verbal communication assessment. Also note the candidate’s listening skills and any other nonverbal cues. Summaries should always address how well candidates articulate work history, experience and qualifications. Summarize the interview responses to your behavioral and situational questions, noting the types of questions to which the candidate provides the best responses. The summary should include notes on whether the candidate practiced good listening skills. Did you have to repeat practically every question? If the follow-up responses signaled that the candidate is an active listener, mention that in your summary.

Professional Traits

During the course of an hour or so, you’re likely to discern the candidate’s professional traits from the kinds of responses offered, even if you don’t directly ask about traits such as integrity, work ethic or business principles. Carefully summarize what you believe are admirable traits that you’re seeking in your next employee; however, if you notice some red flags, don’t omit those from your summary. For example, if someone indicates a commitment to working more than 40 hours a week for the employer, you could indicate that the candidate appears to be a dependable, hard worker who puts job responsibilities ahead of the time clock.

How To Summarize An Interview

Ultimately, summarizing an interview will really help you to make much more competent and confident hiring decisions. It is important that you summarize an interview so you can reflect on the main points of the interview when you have finished interviewing all of the candidates.

You will make mental notes in the moment, but you need to write up some notes afterwards so that you can make an informed decision after the interview process has finished.

If you are not the only person who is making the hiring decision, then you will be able to have an informed discussion with other HR members.

Ultimately, making a summary of an interview will allow you to truly evaluate the candidate and decide whether or not they are suitable for the position.

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What You Don’t Need To Summarize

So, in order for a candidate to have even been offered an interview you will have had an application from them. This application is very likely to be made up of a cover letter, a resume and also the application itself.

All of these documents will not be a part of the candidate’s permanent record; you will not need to summarize these because you will have copies of these. It is also important to stress that these documents should not be used as your notepad.

You should not make notes on these documents and you should not annotate them. If this is something you would want to do then use post-it notes instead.

This is especially important because you don’t want to come under fire for doing anything inappropriate.

Should You Summarize Telephone Interviews?

It is true that a lot of jobs will have a telephone interview before any kind of progression is made to having an in-person interview. These interviews will be essential to really help you reduce the pool of applications that have come in for the job.

Telephone interviews can be daunting for the interviewer as well as the candidate. This is because these interviews are usually especially brief, but telephone interviews can help you work a lot of different things out about a person.

You should definitely consider summarizing telephone interviews because it can be difficult to remember names and also the key thoughts that you have about a person.

You can do this by putting your cell phone on loudspeaker and then this will ensure that you can make notes as you go along.

When summarizing a telephone interview you are going to need to make a note of how the applicants sound on the call, and you also need to take note of how they speak and also their etiquette on the call.

You need to make sure that you ask the candidate about their work history and then you can determine whether or not they are able to meet the basic requirements that you need for a job, and whether or not they are able to exceed the basic necessities that you need for a job.

Should You Judge A Book By Its Cover?

This is the stage where we have now moved past the telephone interview stage, this is the in-person interview. You can obviously take a lot of information from someone’s appearance, but you need to question whether or not this makes a big impact on your employment decision.

The candidate might not meet your professional visual expectations, however, if they have qualifications and cope well with interview pressure then this is something that you would naturally put above appearance.

You might want to include in your summary your first impression of the candidate – but you should not go any further on the appearance front on this. The interview responses should literally do the talking.

Summarizing Communication Skills

It is especially key that you focus your summary notes on the communication skills that your candidate shows. It is true that during a face-to-face interview, you will be able to form an opinion of a candidate from the way that they handle and answer your questions.

You also really need to take notice of the candidate’s listening skills too. It is important that you look for candidates who can be confident in what they are saying, but who also know when to take a moment to listen to their interviewer.

You will be able to pull together solid opinions on how the candidate articulates their work history and also how the candidate talks you through their experiences along with the qualifications that they have.

During the interview, if you feel as though you are constantly repeating questions, or if you find that the candidate is not clearly answering the question that you have asked then you should make note of these points in your summary.

There is a difference between angling your answer to show off your strengths, and completely ignoring the question that you have been asked.

Thinking About Professional Traits

Last but not least, you should leave room in your summary to give an outline of the professional traits that the interview candidate shows. Over the course of the interview, you will be able to come to an overall conclusion of how professional the candidate is.

You do not have to ask the candidate direct questions about how professional they are. After all, if they have made it to the interview stage then it will be pretty clear that they are good at communicating who they are and what they could bring to the job.

You will be able to judge professionalism by identifying the more admirable traits that the candidate shows off while the interview is going on.

If you appreciate the respect of politeness that the candidate shows then you should note this down. But, it is also important that you note down the positives here as well as the negatives. It’s all about reading between the lines.

In Conclusion

Overall, it is especially important that you summarize notes after an interview.

We recommend that you take into consideration your first impressions of the candidate, how effectively your candidate communicates and listens, and you should also note down how professional you think your candidate is.

Summarizing your interview will really help you, especially if you have a vast number of candidates to get through. Doing this will help you make an informed decision and you can have a fair assessment noted down of all of the candidates.

How to summarize a job interview?

moreover, How to write an interview? Successfully complete all stages of the maintenance hiring

What are the signs of a successful interview? Lesson 7 signs which show that you have successful your maintenance hiring

How to confirm your interest in a position? you are not sure dto have shown a interest sufficient for le posed, you can write: “Madam/Sir, I would like à thank you for the quality of the exchange we had on (date) in as part of the recruitment of the activity manager (…) and à to to confirm mon interest in le posed.

Table of contents

How do I know if I will be hired?

Here are 8 avenues to consider for to know if an interview of hiring went smoothly.

How do you know if the interview went well? Seven clues that the job interview went well place

How to destabilize a person during an interview? 4 INFALLIBLE PROCESSES FOR UNSTABLE A CANDIDATE DURING THE CARE

How to express interest in a position by email? Dear Sir/Madam [recipient name], My name is [your first and last name] and I am currently working as [posed that you occupy] within [name of the company in which you work]. Through this e-email, I would like to share with you my interest in le posed of [posed to which you are applying and ref.].

How to indicate his interest?

The towers manifestinterest or experienceinterest are constructed with the preposition for, and not with à, before a noun of a thing. They say: I have always feltinterest for the story. We thank you for theinterest that you have demonstrated for this project.

How to thank for a position? I have heard so many wonderful things about him and am thrilled to join the company. Thanks very much for this opportunity. It’s such an honor dto have been selected for ce posed. I always had a lot of respect for the work the company is doing, and I can’t wait to get started.

How do you know if you have passed a job interview?

What are the signs of a failed job interview

What is the response time after a job interview? After 2 to 3 weeks maximum

Usually after 2-3 weeks you should hear from the recruiter that the reply either positive or negative.

Do recruiters call former employers?

If your recruitment goes through a firm, be aware that the recruiter will almost always seek to check your references. It will attempt to reach your old managers, colleagues or even clients.

How do you know if an interview went wrong?

15 signs that your maintenance hiring pass very times

Did I pass my interview? The behavior of your interlocutor is inevitably one of the signs that tell you if a interview is successful or not. Here again, it is difficult to be absolutely certain: if the recruiter frequently looks at his watch, this can mean that he is impatient but also that he may have a very tight schedule.

How to trap a candidate?

It is important to detect the sincerity of the candidate. Ask him about his previous experiences. Don’t hesitate to trust your instincts. A candidate volunteer is perhaps better than a candidate over experienced.

How to destabilize someone? To know how to destabilize a manipulator is not so simple. You must first be aware that you are being manipulated and know comment identify a toxic person before you can unmask them. The important thing is not so much to make him lose his footing, but above all to free himself from it in order to be able to rebuild himself.

How to identify the personality of a candidate?

First of all, be able to answer the question «give me 3 of your faults and 3 qualities» or » Comment do your colleagues see you? «, proves that the candidate knows himself well. This is an essential factor for working well in a team and interacting with colleagues.

What are your motivations example answer? Here are five examples de motivations that you can express in an interview:

How do I show him my interest?

How to show her that I like: to be subtle while declaring your feelings

How to arouse his interest? You can ask an interesting question, evoke a solid or unexpected fact or even express in a few words what you do. Relate this fact to theinterest what your interlocutor should wear to you. Why should he listen to you? This approach will make him want to start a conversation with you.

How to arouse his interest?

Be the instigator of reports from time to time. If you really want to interest her, you have to go ahead and suggest doing it at least once in a while. Try to find times when he’s not expecting it. If you’re shy, you don’t even have to say anything.

How to say thank you professional? I am very grateful to you for your efforts. I am very grateful to you for your important words. I would like to warmly thank you and your collaborators. It’s time for me to say thank you to all the people who have helped me.

How to thank a person by email?

A simple «Thank you» will do just fine, as will «With my thanks or «I tell you thanks ».

How to thank a candidate? Hello [first name candidate]! I confirm that we have received your application for the position of [position title] and you thanks of your trust. We’ll take a few days to study it and we’ll get back to you quickly, we promise.

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