Tag: interview

Don’t Be a Victim to Your Blind Spots

Part 3 of 4 in the Hiring Right series

Don’t let biases stand in your way. Most of us who have done interviewing have learned about biases. The tricky biases are the unconscious biases. One effective way to navigate this challenge is not to interview alone. However, you don’t need an army of 14 interviewers. A well-structured interview process would include 2-5 interviewers. Remember, the more critical the role, the more interviewers needed, but if you find you are needing more than 5 interviewers in your process, likely another issue is occurring, such as a breakdown in trust amongst the interviewers.

Once you have decided to interview as part of a panel or with a recruiter, ensure consistency in understanding job requirements and expected responses from candidates across all interview stages. Consistency promotes fairness and objectivity. Clarify your conflictive understanding of what you are interviewing for, and then divide up the responsibilities. You should trust that each interviewer will assess the candidate to your standards. If it’s a recruiter doing a pre-screen, they will often ferret out hard skills and experience (resume review). If you trust your recruiter you don’t need to do this again.

But what if you have never used this recruiter before, or worse, you have and you still don’t trust them? Spend time in advance agreeing what they will be doing. Seek the recruiter’s understanding of the skills you are looking for. If they struggle to answer basic questions, how can you expect them to probe into your candidates appropriately?

Sometimes lack the background needed to do a hard probe. Remember, they are skilled recruiters and don’t often have the experience in the role you are hiring. That’s okay! Leverage their strengths. Can you trust them to validate a candidate’s working experience, reasons for leaving a job, job hopping or gaps in employment? A good recruiter should be able to identify that the candidate has met the basic requirements of the role. If you are receiving candidates who are not meeting the basic requirements, revisit your calibration with the recruiter. At the same time, you, as a manager, should know what truly sets someone up for success in your organization.

If another person on the interview panel doesn’t align with your interviewing expectations, scrutinize their fit. Consider whether they can effectively contribute to evaluating candidates for the specific role you’re trying to fill. If they cannot, they might not be the right fit for the panel.

As a leader, you might want someone on the team who can learn how to interview like you. In such cases, conduct joint interviews with that person. Assign them specific questions, but be present during the interview. You can probe where necessary or gently guide the conversation. If the person has never interviewed before, do not have them interview alone until you are confident in their feedback. If you put them in that position, it’s your job to make sure they have all the tools and skills necessary to succeed.

Yes, doing all this preparation before you hire takes a long time, but the effort put up front into hiring the right person, will pay off.

You’re almost there. Check out these Interview Tips & Tricks for Managers.

Incase you missed them, check out these other articles in the Hiring Right series

Hiring Right the First Time

Hiring Right: Crafting Effective Interview Questions

Crafting Effective Interview Questions

Part 2 of 4 in the Hiring Right Series

Identifying the required competencies and experience is one thing, validating them is another. When deciding on your questions, you need to identify questions that will go beyond surface-level answers. These questions will reveal depth and, more importantly, authenticity.

Once you identify the skills needed, what questions can you ask to ferret out whether the person truly possesses those skills or is merely appeasing you? What are the key competencies that lead to success? What behavioral questions can you ask that will uncover the competency or reveal if the candidate needs development in a specific area?

Experience is a indicator that a person has built the necessary skills or competencies. Past behavior is the best predictor of future performance. That’s why experiences matter. The easiest way to check for experiences is to look at a resume. Understanding a person’s resume will tell you what they have done and answers several of your questions. However, don’t assume that the resume tells the whole story. It often presents the version the candidate wants you to see. In fact, in today’s world, recruiters are seeing candidates who not only embellished their resumes using AI, but also some candidates who created the whole resume using AI. Some candidates don’t even know what’s on their resume because of this. Because of this, the recruiter or hiring manager has to do some validation. The resume is a launching pad to probe into those experiences in search for the skills you need.

Currently, there is a shift from experience-based hiring to skills-based hiring. Many companies are prioritizing skills over specific experiences (such as working for a particular company in a specific role with a specific education background). The essence of experience is to demonstrate that the candidate has acquired the necessary skills. I’m not suggesting you skip the experiences – not at all! Experience is the fast track to the likely skill. However, if a candidate lacks direct experience, probe for the underlying skill.

If you find that your person has gaps, decide for yourself, are these gaps that I can train or grow within them, or are these gaps that I need filled from the onset?

As you embark on the interviewing process, document your questions. Understand the core reasons behind each question. Was your question a key competency or fit-related question, was it to explore the experience a person had? Was it a probing question? Probing questions to understand a prospect’s answer will vary by prospect, but the key competency, skills, behaviors, traits and drivers that you trying to uncover should be consistent with all of your prospects.

You can’t ask one person about their ability to create data analysis in visuals and another person about their ability to consult with others, and then compare the two responses. These are not like-for-like comparisons, and your decision-making process should be designed to reduce as much bias as possible.

Interview questions are key. Some takeaways for managers:

They should be focused the same skills, competencies, traits or drivers for the same role.

You can ask different people different probing questions, but the basic questions should be the same across all candidates.

Keep interviews down to 5-10 questions max. Sometimes a good behavioral interview may take 5-10 minutes of discussion. If you have more than 3 behavioral interviews, consider breaking up the interview. But also, if you need too many interviews, consider whether you can consolidate down to the core competencies that drive performance outcomes.

Now let’s find out how to take this magic and multiply it. Hiring Right: Don’t be a Victim to Your Blind Spots .

After that: Hiring Right: Interview Tips & Tricks for Managers

Incase you missed it: Hiring Right the First Time