Building A World Class Interviewing Culture

Quality interviewing takes effort, time and skill. While a small share of employees will naturally prioritize hiring, most will (unconsciously) deprioritize hiring when they are forced to choose between doing work that is explicitly valued by the organization (eg. work that can translate to pay increases and promotions) and work that is not explicitly valued by the organization (eg. work that is valued in words but not in material organizational actions).?

Show Me the Incentives, and I'll Show You The Outcome

Charlie Munger wasn't an organizational psychologist, but his insight on structural incentives did help him amass one of the largest fortunes on planet earth before he left us, so he might have been on to something.

Put simply, if you want an outcome in an organization, then you should align incentives such that employees are rewarded for behaving in ways that produce the desired outcome. In the context of creating an interviewing culture, aligning incentives translates to the following:

Include interview participation (both rate & quality) as a meaningful input for performance reviews, including for individual contributors:

That which is measured improves... When employees know that interviewing participation (and quality!!!) are both inputs to future performance reviews, and thus pay raises and promotions, they are far more likely to self-motivate toward participating in the process.

Ensure managers have the visibility required to assess interviewer performance:

It's "easy" to show up for an interview. It's devilishly difficult to be a high-skill assessor of future performance. Most managers take time to reasonably scrutinize the work output of their direct reports - but, in my experience, I've found they're less likely to have a similar behavior when it comes to interviewing practices.

Managers and mentors need to have the line of sight to observe interviewers, provide feedback, and be reasonable judges of their interviewing technique.

In practice, managers should:

• Shadow interviewers, especially junior interviews
• Review scorecards or written feedback from their direct reports
• Calibrate to ensure their direct reports come to similar conclusions + ratings based on the same interviewing performance

Allow interviewers the time needed to focus on high quality interviewing:

When employees are overloaded with deliverables, then interviews are dumped on their plate, they are forced to choose where to expend their effort. This often leads to poor (or no) prep, hastily conducted interviews, skipped interview debriefs, and lousy (or no) scorecards.

Especially in high growth organizations, calories expended on interviewing and hiring need to be accounted for in product planning, sprints, etc - else you are dooming your interviews to sure failure.

A Real Example Of Self-Sustaining Interview Culture

One notable example of an organization that does this: Amazon. The company famously prioritized interviewing and hiring as a core element of job progression when Jeff Bezos added “Hire and Develop the Best” to Amazon’s famous leadership principles.

All candidates and current employees are measured against these principles when being considered for a post or promotion, and Bar Raisers, Amazon’s elite interviewing leaders, are charged with ensuring standards are well-understood and followed. Ask current or ex-corporate Amazonian if Amazon really takes these principles seriously: you’re unlikely to meet many who suggests the principles are just words on a wall.?

The outcome of Amazon incentivizing quality interviewing: a workforce that wants to participate in the interviewing process, and that will happily work to improve their ability to “make great hiring decisions.” Employees ask to be added to interviews. They self-select into interviewer training. They read scorecards of interviewers who are well-regarded for their interviewing prowess. The reason: employees seek being valued, and Amazon exhibits how much they value building teams by hiring and promoting capable interviewers, and either limiting the growth of, or firing, individuals that either won’t prioritize participation in the hiring process, or who are incapable of participating in a high quality manner.

In Hiring, Everyone Has A Role

Groups of people struggle to agree on innocuous decisions: where to eat, or whether pineapple belongs on pizza (pineapple does belong on pizza). They struggle even more when the stakes are high, and hiring qualifies as a high stakes scenario.

Hiring generally falters if it is either framed as, or is explicitly designed as, a democratic process. Hiring is most effective when hiring managers are explicitly accountable for decision making, and interviewers understand that their role is to provide input to that hiring decision rather than to “vote” for or against a hire.??

Assigning a sole arbiter often feels uncomfortable for the rest of the interviewing team, at least to start, especially if it is not acknowledged openly. However, it’s a reflection of the ensuing reality that will unfold post-hire. Only the hiring manager will be accountable for that individual's ongoing performance, and therefore they need to be responsible for making the hiring decision.?

Role of the Hiring Manager

Hiring Managers define the job (in concert w/ HR & their manager), identify necessary competencies for the role, and determine the assessment criteria and methodology that will be used when considering a candidate, and identify who should serve as interviewers in the hiring process. They should be the final decision maker in a hiring process - assuming they and their manager are aligned etc.

Role of the Interviewer

Interviewers are participants in the hiring process - they’re assigned specific skills to assess and are asked to return a thorough accounting & opinion of the candidate’s capabilities related to that skill. Interviewers are not assessors of the candidate's fitness for the role. That’s the Hiring Manager’s job!!

This may seem obvious - but my experience has taught me that a very large share of interviewers think their job is to decide if a candidate should be hired, not whether or not a candidate has X, Y, or Z skills.

Assign Competencies & Expect Focus

Hiring is a team sport. However, organizations are often surprisingly willing to look past interviewers not playing their role in the hiring process. Don’t be that organization.?

Imagine the following scenario. A professional football (soccer) goalie decides, on their own volition and mid-game, to suddenly change roles and play as an attacker, leaving their team’s goal unattended as they barrel down the field to collect a loose ball and take a shot on goal. Fans would be aghast - profanities and vuvuzelas likely raining from the stands. Commentators would exclaim “WHAT ARE THEY THINKING.” Their coach would undoubtedly pull them from the pitch and, if it happened twice, the goalie might be permanently removed from the roster.

The example above is so clear it’s impossible to deny: the goalie is making an egregious mistake that imperils their team. And in this specific regard, interviewers and a football goalie are remarkably similar: interviewers, just like goalies, [should] have a specific role to play, and when they stop playing their assigned role, they abandon a critical responsibility their team is depending on them to cover, all while duplicating the efforts of another, likely more qualified, teammate.

Zooming out - the typical interview process totals less than 10 cumulative hours with a candidate, and every hire the team makes, especially for an early-stage company, is a choice that could profoundly affect the team’s trajectory, positive or negative. Hiring is critically important, and yet you have extremely limited time to assess a candidate’s fitness for the role. When an interviewer leaves the proverbial goal during the process, the hiring team incurs an unacceptable and needless loss of fidelity in an already high-cost / high-risk decision-making process.?

Interviewing Tactics

Assign Competencies:

Every interview should have a limited number of skills or behaviors (competencies) they are assessing, and competencies should generally not overlap (unless you need validation). Hiring managers should verify that interviewers understand the definition of their competency.

The result of assigned + narrow competencies:

• Not everyone gets to assess "culture"
• And interviewers shouldn't tunnel on areas of perceived weakness if those areas are not their focal area
• Some interviews should be wholly focused on behaviors ("soft skills") rather than hoping a cadre of technical interviews can assess those soft skills as a byproduct of technical conversations

Thoughtfully Assign Interviewers:

As they say... "real recognize real." Interviewers should be masters of what they are assessing, and they should generally be either a peer of, or senior to, the role they are assessing. (eg: a mid-level engineer should not interview a senior-level engineer)

Review Interviewer Findings:

Take note of recurring incidents of interviewers “leaving the goal” - IE, not evaluating their assigned competency, or evaluating it ineffectively. This is where "manager line of sight" is critically important.

Provide Feedback:

When an interviewer consistently misses their competency or opts to assess other competencies (or different versions of their assigned competency), provide direct feedback.?

Act on patterns:

If a consistent pattern emerges despite clear and direct feedback, consider removing the interviewer from the interviewing process. Depending on how you choose to evaluate performance, this could be a monumental decision that leads to performance management outcomes (ie: disciplinary action, performance improvement plan, or eventual termination)?

That's all I've got for now! Curious to hear what's worked for your organization, or if you have differing perspectives. Drop a comment!!