The Anatomy of the Job Interview Process

I have covered some of this before in the Clubhouse calls I participate in for job seekers, but I wanted to help unpack how the interview process unfolds. The goal of interviews (if they are well-constructed) is to use the same criteria to evaluate all candidates for the same role and to gather actionable and quantifiable feedback to arrive at a hiring decision.

Before any interviews, phone screens, or even before a job is posted, recruiters will meet with hiring managers once a job has been approved (usually by Finance and HR). This is called an "intake meeting” and should occur with every new job. This is where the recruiter and the hiring manager go over the job in detail:

• ?How does it fit into the organization?
• What are the actual responsibilities/deliverables?
• Process: will there be a phone screen and who will conduct it, any sort of external practical assessment, interview loop design (who, how long, how many)

The next piece is probably the most important for job seekers to understand:

• Why is the role open? (Growth i.e. a new position, or a backfill for someone that is leaving/has left the organization)
• What are the actual functional requirements for this role? (this includes education, certifications, industry processes, actual work experience, software/industry tools)

Some companies also develop their interview-specific strategies at this stage, sometimes later in the process once the first interview is about to be scheduled. This is the procedure where interviewers are given specific areas to focus on and interview questions/topics are hashed out. Most organizations try and use the least number of interviewers to get the interview data they need to make a decision; that being said, the more responsibility the role has, the more potential for an increasing number of steps, especially at the executive (generally Director and above) levels.

• Identifying the functional skills and background needed to be successful in the specific role
• Competencies (i.e. soft skills and problem-solving abilities)
• Values in alignment (i.e. transparency, honesty, ownership/accountability as common examples)

Before the first interview on a new position (and if there are any significant changes to the loop i.e. new interviewers or a refinement of the process), there is usually a meeting between the recruiter, the hiring manager, and all the interviewers to discuss the focus areas and "who covers what". Everyone on the loop knows what the areas of focus will be, and who will be assessing each area.

After each interview loop has concluded, there is another gathering of interviewers to discuss the in-depth feedback of each candidate. THIS is probably the single most important part of the process.

Employers manage their interview feedback process in various ways. Sometimes there is a centralized area where interviewers can see feedback as it unfolds as each interviewer completes their meeting with the candidate (usually either as an email or via a real time repository such as the ATS), or often it is called "blind feedback" where only the recruiter and/or the hiring manager sees the feedback. Some employers hire by consensus, meaning every interviewer has to recommend a "hire" decision, some leave it completely at the hiring manager's discretion. Many companies have an interview role that is outside of the team that has the objective of evaluating whether the candidate will be a long-term (vs. "this role") fit for the company. At Amazon, it is called the "Bar Raiser", at Microsoft it is called the "As Appropriate"; at another company I worked at they were called "Rangers". Some employers empower their hiring managers to decide who they want to hire; others have a committee (Google is famous for their hiring committee.)

So, I think it is also important to discuss what goes into becoming a screener or an interviewer. This is one of the most critical roles at any company, and it holds a LOT of responsibility. I have been at several companies where being trained and implemented as an interviewer is one of the hallmarks in career ladders for promotions (i.e. from a mid-level to a "senior" role). Interviewing takes a significant amount of time away from crucial operations for any team (but by the same token, it is a critical responsibility, since the person that receives an offer will be onboarded to help lighten the load.)

Outside of the recruiting function itself (which is responsible for making sure that the interview process and interviewers adhere to legal guidelines and has some formal training around the function), training to be a screener/interviewer usually is learned on-the-job by shadowing other skilled interviewers (and with recruiting providing a comprehensive list of illegal topics/questions to avoid and a written overview of the employer's interview format and structure). This means that there is at least one mentor for the new interviewer in training - often the hiring manager or team lead. Usually the mentee attends several screens/interviews as an observer (and all pre/post meetings), and then after a significant number of rounds, they will conduct some or all of an interview with their mentor observing (and stepping in for clarification if needed.) There is usually a significant amount of post-mortem between the mentor and the trainee after each interview to answer questions, go over the actual process including why certain question were chosen, discussing the candidate’s responses, etc.) It is usually several months of the shadow model before someone is ready to become an actual interviewer, and even then the hiring manager and recruiter will discuss the quality of the trainee's interviews and feedback for several subsequent loops.

Hopefully this breakdown into the most impactful part of the hiring process will either clarify the process and help dispel some of the confusion that job seekers are dealing with.?