Why it’s not right for the candidate interview process.
Whether most employers want to admit it or not, the hiring process often comes down to the emotional feels that arise during the interview process. Sometimes this is born out of desperation: i.e., you have an opening at your company and it needs to be filled ASAP. Sometimes hiring decisions are made by a simple resume scan; the candidate checks all the right boxes, but then turns out to be a marginal employee. Other candidates might be overlooked because they don’t meet the perfect qualifications, but they still have a proven history of successful work to consider.
Hiring the best candidate is difficult, but finding the right mix of gut instinct and meeting the necessary job descriptions requires a delicate balance. Read on to find out how to improve your interviewing skills and discover the perils of hiring solely with your gut.
Have a Diverse Talent Team
Diversity is a commonplace word in 2020, but it is an important essence of a hiring team. Diversity can be made up of gender and race, however, diversity should also include years of experience. Having a talent team that assists with the hiring process of all 20-year veterans will make hiring a new grad very difficult. The opposite is true as well; people with little years of experience will be wary of someone who has 20-30 years of work under their belt.
One of the decisions the talent team must address is choosing between a candidate with experience and one with talent. For example, someone who has been working for years might be one of your options, but they might not be skilled in what your company needs. Yes, they are most likely a hard worker who is experienced, but maybe not the best fit. On the other hand, you have another candidate who isn’t as experienced but is much more talented and skilled in what you need or demonstrates the ability to be so in a short amount of time. This candidate might need more basic training around the unit and in the business but they are skilled in the job role.
Weighing the pros and cons of each candidate is a complicated matter and should be handled by a variety of people with a partial vote. This should happen at the end of an interview, or at least, within one or two days afterward so the candidate’s performance is adequately assessed.
Create An Interview Outline
As an employer, you’ll want to create an interview outline and checklist. This will add an element of organization to your interview process instead of just asking candidates whatever comes to your mind. Doing this also helps to add consistency and a way to measure and assess candidates. You can easily weed out candidates who are good at interviewing but might not be as good at the actual job if they don’t measure up to others who do. Sometimes a candidate’s likability can overshadow their actual skills and experience.
When constructing an outline for the interview process, an employer needs to consider a few different aspects that would make someone a good employee. First of all, consider the goals that you want the new employee to complete. Then, deciding which tools the ideal candidate needs to have is another factor that should be on the agenda. These tools are skills that are required to function in this position on an everyday basis. The New York Times suggests checking for additional qualities like if the person is genuinely interested in the work of the organization and if they treat people as equals. These are also important for any employer to consider because it will help to analyze consistency among their answers and reveal more about the candidates’ personalities and lives. Finally, decide what makes a candidate an absolute “no”. Sometimes saying no is difficult as emotions can cloud one’s judgment during an interview. However, if you know what a “no” category is, and a candidate falls into that, then your decision becomes easier. But each “no” needs to be substantiated by facts and gut.
Post-Interview Checklist
Following every candidate should be a post-interview checklist that is unique to each person who was interviewed. These checklists should be consistent from one candidate to the next and should evaluate every candidate with the final score being a decision to hire or not. It’s imperative that this checklist is completed immediately after the candidate leaves so you still have a fresh idea of the person who you just interviewed.
The goal is to evaluate the candidate accurately on paper as best as possible. This will make comparing candidates and making a decision much easier in the future because you can read your checklists from before. It also helps eliminate gut hiring decisions because you will have a good evaluation of every candidate written out in front of you.
The most important part of making this checklist after meeting with a candidate is because the decision not to hire a candidate needs to be supported with specific, applicable reasons and not just gut instinct. According to Business News Daily, keeping a realistic evaluation of someone’s personality can help to improve your interviewing process because skills are required to do the job, but finding a personality that fits in with the culture of the company is just as important.
Just remember, improving your interviewing process can be difficult, but not impossible. If you follow these tips, you will greatly enhance your success in hiring the right candidate.
How have you used checklists or gut instinct in your hiring processes? What worked well for you? Let us know in the comments; we’d love to hear from you!
