According to hiring managers, 1 in 5 hires are “bad hires" or are "regretted decisions" - which is a staggering 20% of total hires. Regardless of your company size, growth, industry, skill needs, or products, talent is the most important, sustainable, competitive asset in any business.
However, many interviewers & hiring managers over-think & over-engineer the interview process leading to poor quality of hire & poor decision making. In a recent post, 9 Tips for Recruiting Sales Teams FAST, I've included best practices for recruiting at speed, scale, and accuracy.
Whether you replicate the entire process below or just use a few nuggets, this guide below will help increase your hiring accuracy, solidify interview structure, & simplify your process. Here is your 8 Step Manager Guide to First Round Interviews.
Great entrepreneurs & investors are masterful at calculated decision-making - weighing the potential size of an opportunity against the potential risks involved. Great interviewers & talent assessors are no different. An interviewer should always have evaluation criteria to assess the size of opportunity for hiring this candidate vs. risks involved in hiring this candidate. Typically these evaluation criteria fall into 4 critical question buckets:
Here is my recommended evaluation criteria & example questions for evaluation:
Culture + Team Fit: If someone does not fit your company culture, your evaluation is complete. It's not a question of "if" this hiring risk would come back to bite you, it's a question of "when" and how much. A risky hire on culture-fit criteria has the highest negative impact potential for a business.
Aptitude or "Intellectual Horse Power": Natural intelligence can replace experience & skill quite often - especially in junior & mid-level roles.
Attitude: Attitude is infectious, & stands the test of time. It will have immediate & lasting positive/negative impact on teams.
Skills: Quite simply, does this candidate have the complete skill set necessary to be a high performer?
Time Investment & Hand-Holding: Based on this specific candidate's skill & knowledge gaps, you need to assess the level of time investment & hand-holding necessary (from you & the team) to train, teach, and develop this candidate to be a top performer. Every extra hour you need to give to this person is an hour you can't have with your team, stakeholders, customers, etc. It's very much a possibility that this candidate is the right fit for your company, the team, and the role, but you don't have the amount of time necessary to invest in this candidate.
Companies have talent options. Candidates have employment choices. The candidate & company are making a mutual assessment together as to whether or not they can help each other accomplish their goals. When articulating the goal of the interview to the candidate, it may sound like this:
The goal of this interview process is to make a mutual assessment together on whether or not we can help you accomplish your goals, and you can help us accomplish ours...
Make the candidate feel comfortable. Interviews are an awkward scenario for candidates. Comfortability is the best way to ensure you're evaluating the potential of the actual candidate (Dr. Jekyll) vs. a "nervous candidate" (Mr. Hyde). Simply saying, "I just want you to be yourself during this process..." can go a long way.
Establishing the honesty rule opens the door for the candidate to ask you worthy, honest questions during the interview. It also allows you to give the candidate direct feedback at the end of the interview in an open, honest environment.
I’ll be honest with you and you be honest with me during this conversation. Then at the end of our conversation, I can give you some honest feedback so you know where we stand..."
Where You Have Been:
I'd like to understand where you've been, where are you right now, and where you want to go in your career...Let's start with where you've been. Can you chronologically walk me through your professional experiences to date, including each role, your main responsibilities, and any KPI's or measurements you had?
This is where the experience & skills assessment starts. Let the candidate know that you'll interrupt them periodically to ask questions. Ask the candidate to chronologically walk you through their professional experience to date. Asking for previous roles, responsibilities, and KPI's keeps solid structure to their answer. This also gives you a fairly accurate idea of how their skills, KPI's, and prior work environment will translate to your company, your team, and this role.
Where You Are:
...so, why are we here today? Why are you looking for a change from your current situation & what kind of change are you looking for?
Whether you're talking to passive candidates or active candidates, they've accepted this interview for a reason. This section allows you to understand their motivations & reasons behind making the choice to be in this interview today.
Where You Want to Go
We've talked about where you've been, where you are right now and the reasons we're having this conversation. Where do you want to go - What are your career goals for the next 3-5 years and what's the plan to get there?
This section is one of the most important in the interview process. Not all candidates will know their exact 3-5 year plan and career goals - that's fine. However, you will get a sense for their ambitions, their motivations, their drive, their passions, and how realistically they have thought about accomplishing their goals - all extremely & equally valuable for your evaluation. This will also give you an idea of how likely the candidate is to set a goal, make a plan to achieve it, and execute.
Perception: Ask the candidate to articulate:
This information gives you a comprehensive view on the candidate's perception of the company, the role, and how they would execute in the first 3-6 months with their current knowledge & skills. You will be able to assess the time investment & hand-holding needed from you and the team to develop this candidate into a high performer.
Reality: Fill in the gaps for the candidate. Briefly, correct and properly articulate what your company does, how they do it, what the role entails, and a typical 3-6 month plan for new hires. Also include details about the structure of the team and your style as a manager. Spending time to fill in these gaps and give details to the candidate is valuable for 3 reasons:
After you've filled in the gaps for the candidate about the company, the role, the team, and your style - they will have plenty of questions. Let the candidate know how much time they have to ask questions. Save yourself at least 3-5 minutes to discuss your feedback, any next steps, and finalise the interview.
As you may have heard before, "Feedback is a gift." Giving candidates direct feedback allows you to do 2 things:
Candidates often talk about their interview & recruitment experiences with other professionals in their network - likely with some talent you'd like to recruit. Ensure all candidates' experiences are positive. The best candidate experience comes with transparency & appropriate expectation setting.
Leave your candidate with clear next steps at the end of each interview. At a minimum, this should include a timeline for when they should receive feedback & know next steps in the process.
*This post was originally published on Linkedin.