3 Interviewing Mistakes to Avoid (& What to Do Instead)

If you're a hiring manager, Head of People, or anyone designing an interview process, these three fixes are a great start to ensuring your candidates have a great experience.

1. Making a candidate repeat their story in every interview.

Why? It will appear that no one is communicating about the candidate internally, that the interviewer isn't prepared, and moreover, it's inefficient.

What to do instead: On the first call, do a career walk through and give the hiring team clarity by sharing those notes. Make sure each person has a different focus and knows what they should be assessing. Most importantly, prep the candidate with this info so they know where to focus on each call.

Bonus tip: Use a recorder/transcriber (my favorite is?BrightHire) to share important clips to your hiring team.

2. Slow feedback.

Why? It makes the candidate feel deprioritized and makes the company look unorganized. They may be in process at numerous companies and moving quickly can mean the difference between getting an offer out in time or not. Momentum is everything in a hiring process.

What to do instead: Schedule your interviews for 45 min but block your calendar for 60. Use those 15 minutes to provide feedback and action items to your Internal or External Recruiter. Tell the candidate when they should receive feedback and what to do if they don't.

Bonus Tip: If you feel strongly that this candidate might be "the one," don't delay. Get them set up for next steps immediately and let your hiring team know they're a priority. Don't lose your top candidate due to a slow process (or another company's agility).

3. Firing off questions one after the other.

Why? You can't demonstrate a communicative culture with a barrage of questions without followup, intention, or conversation. They're also interviewing and assessing you and the company and need to be sold on why.

What to do instead: Have your questions ready, but engage in a conversation through critically thinking about and discussing their answers. Make sure they have a chance to ask questions of you as well.

Bonus tip: Ask them what they're looking for in a new role and look for opportunities to highlight the pieces that align within your own company.

Hiring doesn't have to be hard. Establishing best practices will not only make it much easier for your team to land their top picks, but your candidates will thank you too.