How good do you think you are at interviewing candidates?
Every Founder or Tech Leader has to go through the exciting process of interviewing new hires. It’s kind of a rite of passage until you’ve grown your business enough to have someone do this for you. However, not everyone finds themselves naturally stellar at making correct assessments during interviews. Paul Foster, who heads up Skylan, has had over 10,000 hours of interviewing experience from years of working in the headhunting industry. We talked about his best practices and came up with a few things for you to keep in mind during interviews.
Why do we interview?
We know interviewing happens due to the need to discover more about the candidate. We interview because we are about to make a huge investment. So it's imperative to think about how you are going to identify potential risks associated with your new investment.
A CV is a tool which can only tell us so much. It's through interviews that candidates are given a chance to expand on their competency. During interviews, candidates get to tell us the narrative behind the condensed format of their professional history. Interviews also allow employers a chance to personally introduce their business value proposition and why joining them will be a great idea.
By answering well-thought and challenging questions, candidates enable hiring managers to gain a deeper understanding of things such as their decision-making process, personal aspirations, etc. Paul Foster, head of Skylan, warns, “If you don't make the right assessment, you're going to get the wrong person.”
You have to be clear on your business goals and make a decision, can this candidate be instrumental in helping you achieve your short and long term goals? A wrong hire, at any level, will incur cost instead of contributing to growth. In today's modern world, Paul explains that our ability to ask questions should be stronger than our ability to answer them.
What are we trying to assess in an interview?
Hiring managers interview to gain a deep assessment of a candidate. Before you start interviewing, think about what you need in a candidate. Not preparing for interviews is one of the most common mistakes we see. To help you prepare, here is a list of things you should be assessing in your interviews.
- Character
- Values
- Abilities
- Skills
- Knowledge
- Reasons for Leaving versus Reasons for joining
- Aspirations (short & long term)
- Motivation (What is theri why?)
- Present salary versus salary expectation
- Counter offer risk.
Candidates are usually on their best behavior during interviews. “No one can keep a facade up for six to nine months. That facade will come down. You might as well see the person behind the facade,” Paul says. Your job as an interviewer is to peel back layers and get to the real reason they want the job. Remember to ask them about their experience, their decision-making process, their particular mechanism when faced with adversity in the workplace, in life.
As Paul talks about mutual suitability, he tells us, “Find out what are their short-term, long-term aspirations. What are their key motivators? As a hiring manager, can you provide them with tasks and responsibilities that will fit their actual key motivators? Aspirationally, is your candidate aligned with your business vision? Can you help fulfill their aspirations? If we can help fulfill that, this is mutual suitability.”
Ask questions to find out their needs and wants. Use that as a guide if you can offer them value that translates into motivation. Can you meet their salary demands? Where are they in their career and where do they want to go? Can you help them get there? We want honest answers so we end up hiring the right people who will be genuinely motivated to perform at their best while they are with us.
When interviewing, keep in mind that candidates apply because they believe they have something of value to contribute to your growth. This entire process should revolve around recognizing needs. There’s a need to inform each other, a need to know if working together is a good idea. Most importantly, as a hiring manager, you need to assess every candidate deeper than their CV allows. This is how interviews help us find the best fit for any role.
Work smart. First impressions are tricky as only 33% of recruiters can reliably assess suitability within the first 90 seconds. Make the (average) 4o minutes count. Prepare for your interview, its a big investment so make it count. Ask the right questions and don't be afraid to go deep to make the correct assessment. Paul says if you don’t interview someone at the right level in the right depth--and make the correct assessment, you may end up regretting it only after three to nine months.
A common mistake is when a hiring manager gets along well with a candidate and decides to hire that person. Whether or not a candidate manages to keep you engaged after a minute, it's your turn to make the most out of the next 38 minutes. Go deep and ask questions that support a positive first impression, or turn a bad first impression around. Focus on discovering their honest reasons for responding to your job posting. This will help you later on when you're deciding between the two best candidates.
Agree on the level of questioning. Get permission from the start of the interview to ask probing questions. Ask your candidates if it's okay to ask questions to provide you a deep assessment of why and how they can contribute as a team member. Build rapport. Ensure that they feel safe participating and that they are free to refuse questions they don't feel comfortable answering. Glassdoor reports, “ a 10% more challenging job interview process leads to 2.6% higher employee satisfaction.” This reveals that as difficult questions allow the best candidates to shine, you get closer to picking the right person for the job, and you end up with a great new member of your team.
Ask for experience. Ask for what they've done before, how well they did it, how others responded to it, etc. Candidates apply because they see themselves as capable of contributing value to your business. Find out what it is, how good they are at it (based on experience), and more importantly, why you should rely on them to do the job for you. Don’t shy away from asking for expertise and experience relevant to the job title. 75% of hiring managers do this because they are keen on someone who has the key skills.
Use probing questions. Ask about their aspirations. Ask about why they left their previous company. Ask why they chose your company. Ask about financials. Your goal is to figure out their "why". Assess their personal and professional aspirations, and how they can be linked to your vision. This way, you will have a solid foundation for the dynamic you'll build--one that offers value for the whole team.
Have clear objectives. You want to know about your candidate, but you also want your candidate to know about the value your company offers. A recent report says 83% of talent can change their opinion of a once-admired company after a bad interview. You want to maintain that level of motivation they saw in your company when they chose to apply for your vacancy. Paul tells us to sell the role, keep it diplomatic, and listen better than we talk. This helps maintain a comfortable yet analytical interviewing environment.
Consider your options and your resources. About 60% of hiring managers are comfortable with video interviews, 47% of them choosing to save on valuable resources. Remember, just because it's a video interview, you still need to prepare and conduct the interview as if it was face to face.
Find all the help you can get. On average, companies put applicants through 9 stages of interviewing. This is within the average of 20-40 days that an interview becomes a job offer for the right candidate. That’s a lot of time without someone great onboard, and a lot of time spent on interviewing, screening CVs, and not on making a profit. Ask for references and make sure you follow up on them.
Psychometric Assessments & 90 days plans. Both are great tools which can be used as part of your interviewing process, but be aware. Skylan did a recent poll and found
62% of people feel that Psychometrics shouldnt be used as part of the interviewing process.
57% of people feel that, 90 day plans shouldnt be used as part of the interviewing process
So if you are going to use them, expect a level of resistance.
Skylan provides a coaching course designed for DigiTech Leaders to improve their interviewing skills. If you would like to know more about how a coaching course could benefit you or your management team, contact us on LinkedIn