Getting Post-Interview Feedback from your Candidates + Happy New Year!

In this week's edition:

1. Getting Post-Interview Feedback from your Candidates
2. Job Seeker Tip: Discussing your weaknesses
3. Happy New Year message

Getting Post-Interview Feedback from your Candidates

When you're recruiting for Top Talent, especially in a highly competitive market (or "Candidate-driven market" as we're all calling it), its extremely important for you as part of your recruitment strategy to constantly and consistently be assessing the interest level of your Top Candidates who are actively in your Interview Pipeline - specifically, you want to be identifying gaps which might prevent your Candidate from moving forward on this opportunity with you.

Address the gaps or disconnects, and you have a higher likelihood of things going smoothly later on.

This isn't something you make educated guesses on, and its not something you assume either.

And its also not something all Candidates will be forthcoming about. In the same way Recruiters and Hiring Managers can sometimes refrain from providing Candidates with completely honest feedback as to why they do not wish to move forward with them, Candidates often times might do this as well and withhold their actual doubts and concerns to avoid offending you or your Organization - ESPECIALLY if they like you and don't want to risk damaging their relationship with you over the long-term!

Hey - every Recruiter, myself included, has made the mistake of THINKING they had a highly interested Candidate (or Candidates) in their Interview pipeline only to be uncertain about whether or not they want to move forward with your Offer when its decision-making time. This can be a real waste of time and effort for everyone when you've filtered down to this one Top Candidate who ultimately does not see any sense in accepting an Offer with you - and now you're back to square one in your Recruitment strategy.

As a Recruiter, this can often leave you wondering: what happened? They seemed so interested?

Look - it all comes down to taking a more proactive approach to knowing and understanding your Candidates and leaving ZERO room for making assumptions, hope, crossing fingers or any of that.

I don't know about you, but for me, I want to know what my Candidates are thinking and feeling at each point of the Interview process. Knowing this allows me to determine if I should keep recruiting for other Candidates, or if there's a high likelihood that there's a great mutual fit where both parties (Hiring Team and Candidate) are happy. It also helps ensure my Clients (i.e. the Hiring Team) are not spending time and setting unrealistic expectations with the wrong Candidates.

Enter the "Post-Interview" Feedback call.

In my opinion, this is the MOST important call you need to be having with ALL your candidates. The purpose of this call is not to force or persuade your Candidates into making decisions - think of these calls more like "checking the temperature" to understand your Candidate's thoughts about the job opportunity as they move along the Interview cycle, and YES this needs to be done after each and every Interview they have with the Organization.

A key part of conducting these conversations is that they allow you to identify any gaps which need to be brought to the surface which either yourself or the Hiring Team now has the opportunity to address - or see, as early on as possible, that there is a disconnect which would not make sense for both parties to proceed any further.

Now doing these calls does not mean simply asking your Candidates "So how did it go?" and "If an Offer was extended, would you take it?". Sorry but if that is all that your Post-Interview feedback call consists of, that is not thorough. This is an opportunity to really dig deep into the psyche of your Candidates.

Personally I have a list of several questions I go through and this is usually a 10-20 minute phone call with my Candidate post-interview to help determine where they stand and any gaps they're seeing between the role and whether they see it as an ideal career move for themselves. And I conduct these post-interview conversations after each Interview.

A really simple question you can ask your Candidates post-Interview to identify a gap while you're doing this is:

"Based on what you're looking for in an ideal career opportunity, what are your thoughts so far about this opportunity overall? What do you like? Why? What do you feel is missing?"

Asking this question is a key method in identifying potential gaps which exist for your Candidate which might very well prevent them from moving further along the process, seriously considering the role as a good decision, or even entertaining accepting an Offer if one was extended.

Again, do not assume your Candidate will always bring these up themselves, as mentioned before - they might not even immediately be consciously aware of any concerns they have and might require your assistance in bringing these to the surface through asking good questions.

Good recruiting is proactive, not reactive.

The aim here is not to necessarily "close the candidate" and "get a deal done" - the aim is to primarily have a thorough understanding of whether or not any gaps or disconnects exists which you can now address or drill down on with the assistance of anyone else involved in the Recruitment/Hiring process.

Is your Organization consistently conducting Post-Interview feedback calls after every Interview with Candidates in your Interview pipeline? Send me a direct message if you have questions about this or need more ideas on conducting these.

Job Seeker Tip: Discussing your weaknesses

"Tell me about a weakness you have?"

Argh! How many of us just HATE being asked this question when we're being Interviewed?

What's the point of even being asked such a question? Is the Interviewer trying to set us up for failure by even asking this? What's their angle here?

Look - I get it. When Interviewers ask you to talk about your weaknesses, it can leave you wondering how exactly to respond to this and why on Earth they're even asking this seemingly outdated and archaic question.

Before we get into the HOW, let's briefly examine the WHY - WHY are they even asking this question?

While every Interviewer is different and might have their own reasons for asking you to talk about your weaknesses, in most cases its to establish TWO things:

1. Your level of self-awareness - i.e. how self-aware are you about your shortcomings, and
2. What proactive steps you're taking to address your weaknesses

An Employee who is not self-aware and who cannot self-identify when they have an area which requires improvement makes things a bit more difficult for Employers. Let's step outside of the workplace and just think about people you know, who clearly have some things which they need to improve on, but are not even aware of them? How much more difficult has it been for you to bring this to their attention when they themselves are not aware of it or do not see it themselves? Way more difficult right? Self-awareness is always an important first step in the path to self-improving on an area of weakness.

The next thing is: okay, so you're aware of your shortcomings, but what are you doing to proactively address it? Or are you someone who will simply passively wait around and not take any steps in improving this area of weakness you have? That's the other factor the Interviewer is trying to determine through this question.

From here we see the ideal response to this question is to address both above points. This is why you should avoid any "eye-rolling", ineffective responses such as:

"My greatest weakness is I work too hard"

"I'm too helpful"

"I go above and beyond"

Nobody believes none of that and I guarantee every Interviewer who hears this is inwardly throwing up their last meal.

Talk about an actual weakness you have, and then talk about what steps you're currently taking to address it. Bonus: if you're already starting to see improvement in this area and your stats are starting to lift up, close your response off with mentioning those positive trends as well.

Happy New Year!

I wanted to wish you, your families and your loved ones a very happy and prosperous New Year! These past couple of years have not been easy for many of us - but one thing I have seen over and over again is how RESILIENT we all are as people. That is what truly inspires me about people now more than ever. It hasn't been easy, but we WILL prevail folks. I hope you make 2022 yet another year where you persevere and continue to move closer to your potential, so you can be that someone who inspires others with your resilience!

See you in the New Year!

Dean Kulaweera - Director, Recruitment & Sales |?Tech Recruiters 360