Interview Experience Series II: DON’T do these two things when preparing yourself, and the team, for an interview.

The recruitment landscape has drastically changed in 2024, and mostly for the better. In this competitive environment every move you make, or don’t make, to prepare yourself and the team for the interview itself is essential to a successful recruitment journey.? The team at Talynt is dedicating a series of articles with best practices before, during and after the interview journey to ensure you and your team are set up for success. In the last article we discussed the “Must Do’s” prior to the interview. Here are the top two of “Must Don’ts”. Feel free to join the convo in avoiding these, and other, mistakes.

Don’t: Cancel or postpone the interview if you can avoid it.?

The world is a busy place, and often your hiring team is deep into a project, code or recruiting their own team, and it can be tough to get everyone on the same page. Unicorn candidates are usually being pursued by other companies as well because once candidates put their big toe in the water and get a taste, they end up being approached. Some candidates “shop offers” to negotiate stronger- but the majority are seeking greener pastures in the first place, and are going to explore all their options.?

Whatever you do - don’t cancel the interview for a top candidate, or honestly any candidate. Sh*t happens, we get it. Someone’s kid is sick, another round of illness hits the dev team, or the sprint won’t be completed if there are a few people busy interviewing multiple candidates. Rather than cancel or postpone - in an emergency situation I would suggest either shortening the amount of people on the interview list, or the length of times of the interviews itself. The candidate will most likely be much more receptive to a slight change in the agenda rather than a full cancellation.?

The scheduled interview is the first gaze into you and your company's management style, and prioritizing this candidate, as they have done for you, is essential as the first impression. They most likely spent hours preparing and researching, so a last minute cancellation and postpone can leave a bad taste in their mouth. Of course there will be circumstances, for example the storms the last few weeks have canceled flights and postponed some interviews- so we pivot to good old remote and push final rounds to be in person instead of vice versa.?

Don’t: Schedule a million interviews with a million people for one candidate.?

It’s understandable that everyone in your company wants to meet the front-end engineer candidate and have a say in whether or not they are hired. However, I would encourage you to limit the interview to the following: to the hiring manager, to a peer, to another department head where there is cross function, and to a senior leader. That’s it.? Take the energy and excitement of all those who want to participate in an interview and turn it into training opportunities.?

I’ve just seen too many companies- whether it’s 5 people or 5,000 drag their feet and lose top candidates because everyone on the food chain wants to interview the 1 candidate. And it’s not because anyone is being lazy or forgetful, it’s the opposite - everyone is literally too busy to get any interviews on the book.?

Once your job req has been approved, and you’ve chosen your hiring team - creating a place for communication like a Slack channel for the team to throw thoughts or suggestions for the interview experience is one way to stay organized. Additionally when choosing the hiring team, set the expectations “Would every Thursday afternoon work for everyone to hold for interviews?” then put actual blockers on their calendars, and work with your recruiters to say this is the day, or two days, that will work each week. And work the recruiter and the team on the volume.??

Work with your recruiter and create expectations and a goal. For example, have the conversation where you suggest we aim for two candidates a week over the next 2-3 weeks.? You do not want to interview 35 candidates for one role. It’s a waste of your time, the recruiters and the teams- as well as the candidates. A great recruiter will show you 3 - 5 resumes of top notch candidates that they think you would like, and who even more importantly who they think will like you.?

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Setting expectations for the recruiter, the hiring team and yourself on what this hiring experience will be like for all of you is probably the most important part of preparing for a successful recruitment journey. What are some recruitment “Don’ts” you’ve steered away from recently to set yourself and the team up for success? #recruitment #developer #team #slack #interview #technology #startup