Most candidates — even high-level executives — need to be prepped before the interview. The reason for this is obvious: they all think they’re great interviewees. Most aren’t. Making matters worse, the hiring managers they’ll be meeting think they’re endowed with some special instinct that allows them to accurately assess candidate competency. Most aren’t.

We all know that most hiring managers don't conduct broad-based, evidence-based interviews. Many base their judgments about candidate competency on some narrow combination of first impressions, technical knowledge, academics, and smarts. One sure way to improve your interview-to-hire ratio is to prep your candidates to cope with whatever questions or circumstances arise. If you handle the candidate prep well enough, you can also prep your clients without them even knowing it. (Note: here’s a preview of the video version of this prep. The full version is part of our Recruiter’s eLearning center.)

Following are some key points you should cover when prepping your candidates: