Using multiple interviewers to evaluate candidates is a great way to increase your odds of hiring a top candidate and avoiding a bad hire. However, it’s critical to ensure that all of your interviewers are on the same page with your requirements and the candidate is asked a diverse set of questions by the interview team. In order to prevent any confusion and to create a unified hiring process, consider using an interview system that provides interviewers the following materials several days prior to the interview:
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- An Interview Schedule
- Candidate Resumes
- A clear delineation of who interviews for specific Selection Elements
- Job Description
- An Interview Evaluation Form
Each of these materials is critical to ensure the team is prepared, knows their responsibilities, and evaluates the candidates consistently and based on objective criteria.
Interview Schedule
Interview schedules should be prepared well in advance of the interview date to ensure availability of critical resources necessary to assess a candidate’s capabilities to handle the position as well as to provide the candidate with a diverse perspective of your organization.
Once the schedule is created, share it with the candidate so that they have time to research who they will be meeting with and prepare questions in advance. A prepared candidate is a more comfortable candidate giving you the opportunity to see more of their true personality and competence. The preparedness of the candidate and the quality of questions is a great indication of the depth of the candidate and is facilitated by sharing the schedule early.
For your internal team, the schedule should be written in a way that makes it clear who interviews the candidate before and after to facilitate the delivery of the candidate to the next interviewer or find them if they are running behind. Also, make sure you allow time for the candidate to have breaks between interviews to let them collect thoughts or take a bio break.
Candidate Resume
A candidate resume is an obvious component of all interviews. However, we encourage you to include a printed resume along with the rest of the materials outlined in this document. You don’t want to leave it to your interviewers to print it out the resume 5 minutes prior to the interview. Create a culture where interviewers read the resume in advance and prepare questions based on the candidates’ background as it sends a message to the candidate that they are important and you view them as a critical component to your organization.
Selection Elements
Using a team of interviewers during the hiring process is a great way to ask the candidate many diverse questions. One way to ensure that your team asks a variety of questions is to assign each interviewer specific selection elements. These selection elements should consist of both behavior related characteristics important to the job, as well as job-related characteristics.
Once the interviewer is assigned their specific selections elements, they can then prepare interview questions to evaluate the candidate’s qualifications and fit for the open position. If your assigned selection element was Interpersonal Skills, for example, then you might ask the candidate a question about the last time they became frustrated or impatient when dealing with a former colleague or client.
Job Description
One of the primary reasons most interviewers aren’t able to assess a candidate’s competency is that they don’t know what the person really needs to do to be successful on the job. Make sure that all interviewers have access to the job description before the interview and really understand the job functions. When interviewers don’t know the job, they over-rely on experience, personality, and gut-feelings to make an assessment instead of using results and deliverables to define the work.
Interview Evaluation Form
An interview evaluation form should be given to each interviewer and be used to assess the candidate and provide any feedback during the interview. There needs to be an evaluation process determined ahead of time-based on rankings versus solely subjective thoughts and feelings about a candidate. After the evaluation form has been completed, they should be turned into the person leading the hiring process.
Next, there should be a formal group debriefing session where each interviewer will reveal their thoughts and comments written on their forms. It’s important to have all the interviewers there to discuss and make the final decision. Whether it’s in person, or on a conference call, it’s key to gather everybody in the recap meeting.
Interviewing candidates is an essential part of business, however, few companies are able to do it correctly and efficiently. Using a consistent interview system will help unify your hiring process so you are able to receive the full benefits of using multiple interviewers when hiring.
What is your interview process when using multiple interviewers to evaluate candidates?
