I Conduct Interviews at a BB, Here's Some Tips

I'm a verified member on WSO and you can check my posting history for other informative posts I've made. I've posted on everything from coffee chats to OCR to managing SAs and I do all of this for a BO function at a BB. I try to generalize my advice because I think it can be used by any position you are applying for. 

In this post I'm going to talk about interviewing in 2020 for SA roles. This season I've already conducted a couple dozen interviews and have a few more to come. I know many of you are interviewing - maybe I've even interviewed some of you? - and I've noticed the same mistakes over and over again. So, here's a collection of some of the ways all of you can improve during interviews. 

1. Don't be distracted: Yes, I get it, interviewing virtually can feel weird. And I think some of us have (unconscious) habits in front of a notebook - we check our phones, look around the room, sit hunched over, etc. Be professional, avoid all distractions and interview just as if you were in person. 
2. Don't just sit there: It is extremely poor etiquette to walk into a Zoom room (or whatever) and not introduce yourself. I cannot tell you the number of candidates that will log in, un mute themselves and then not say anything. Honestly, this is one of my first tests - I never talk first. If you come into my room and don't say anything I auto-ding you and it's hard to recover from that. Even a simple, "Good morning, this is Monkey X" is better than sitting there like a dummy. 
3. Be fast, be available: I have posted this tip before in other posts but it bears repeating. When you are being recruited, be as fast as you can with follow ups and thank yous. Here's what it looks like for me, on a recent interview run I spoke with 6 candidates, HR was hounding me for evaluations the same day and super day invites were going out in 2 days. On my last OCR run, I had to send my top 3 resumes before even leaving the campus and my top 10 by 9AM the next morning. So if you want to send me questions or a thank you, you need to do it as soon as we finish up (literally). If you wait to send me something the next day - or even later in the evening the same day - my evaluations may already be with HR. HR may have already sent out the super day invites by the time you get to replying to them. Be fast, be available and know that things can happen quickly so you need to be ready.
4. Have good questions ready: Maybe this year is just a fluke but I have had candidates ask me really poor questions during interviews. When you are speaking with someone you may be working with, it's rarely a good idea to ask HR related questions like compensation. Have good questions and make sure they make sense for the person that is interviewing you. I don't even know if people who will read this even know who Johnny Carson is/was but an old Johnny Carson trick was to get people to talk about themselves, thats the best way to leave that person with a positive impression of the conversation. 

That's all the tips that I wanted to get out with this posting. I'll consider answering additional questions if people post them in the comments below.