What you do (and don’t) say matters. Litherland is a recruiter and interviewer with Summit Search Group in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he’s heard some real horror stories about interviews: An interviewer who fell asleep in front of a candidate, one who was only interested in a candidate in order to scoop information about the competitor for whom the interviewee was working; an interviewer who set up meetings in an off-site location but didn’t show up; and one who asked all candidates to prepare a business plan and then cancelled the search following interviews.

Perhaps you can understand what prompted such bad interviewer behavior. After all, there are so many talented applicants in the market for a job that prospective employers can afford to burn some of them off, right? Wrong, says Litherland firmly, and here’s why: Any time you set up an interview with an applicant, it’s as if you had just opened a retail store. If a “customer” is treated badly, he or she won’t shop with you again.

Worse still, Litherland stresses, the offended applicant is very likely to contact all his or her acquaintances on Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, or another social medium and spread the word about the rude treatment. Whoops! There goes your organization’s reputation—with more people than you can afford to offend.

Litherland cites the example of a large and prestigious Canadian organization for whom he recently interviewed candidates for an opening. When several weeks went by after the interviews with no response to the candidates from the company, at least one of them called Litherland to say he was no longer interested in working for the organization—ever.

Train your interviewers—carefully. Litherland has a list of best practices he believes are necessary to protect your brand.

• Remember that any contact with an applicant—by phone, in writing, or face-to-face—is a marketing opportunity for your company.
• Treat each person you interview as a potential customer.
• Allow enough time for each interview; candidates who are rushed through the process are likely to be offended.
• Prepare a preset list of questions that you will ask all candidates. Why not just let the interview go its own way, based on each individual’s strengths and weaknesses? Says Litherland, “How can you later compare candidates with one another if they haven’t all taken the same ‘test’”?
• If an interview is going poorly, “suck it up and see it through.”
• If an interview is going horribly, simply state that the interview time has expired, and then offer to answer any remaining questions the candidate may have.
• Keep in mind that the overall goal of any interview is to have the candidate report that his or her experience with the organization was a positive one.

Litherland offers more tips: He urges interviewers to take plenty of notes during interviews, to remind them what their impressions were of each person with whom they spoke. We asked whether, in his opinion, the organization should respond in some way to every application it receives for a particular opening. Litherland believes most organizations will find that an onerous task, given the hundreds or thousands of applications they may receive. Instead, he advises, end each posted opening with a statement like this: “Only those candidates deemed qualified will be contacted.”

But Miss Manners, aka Judith Martin, said in a recent column concerning applications submitted online: Companies could use “form replies, which is easier than ever with e-mail,” to let candidates know at least that their applications have been received. But you must respond personally, says Litherland, to everyone you’ve interviewed. Even if you write to say the opening will not be filled, at least you won’t leave candidates feeling ignored.

Finally, Litherland recommends this interview structure:

• Discuss candidates résumé for about 10 minutes
• Positively describe the company and the opening
• Pose preset questions
• Address candidate’s questions