Interview Tips To Hire The RIGHT Candidates In Your Teams

Considering that the first 100 employees in your organisation will define the next 500, you surely want to have your hiring process right from the start!

In my conversations with founders and managers, I often get the question: “what questions should I ask candidates in the interview to make sure we hire the right people?”, and here is my response:

FIRST, clarify who does what in your interview process.

Too often, the same questions are asked during the interview process. The recruiter will ask the candidate to walk them through their employment history, then the next interviewer will do the same, as well as the following ones. This is a waste of time and a very poor candidate experience!

?? The objective of the interview is to collect as much data as possible to make an objective decision. If everyone asks the same questions, it will eventually tell us more about the interviewers than the candidate!

?? Here is the best way to ensure you get the most of your interview process:

Every candidate should go through 3 levels of interviews: The recruiter interview, the technical fit interview(s) and the culture fit interview.

1/ The recruiter interview:

This interview is critical because it validates the fact that the candidate is really interested in the job and that they have the basic requirements for the role. This is also when the recruiter will be able to build a relationship with the candidate. Hiring is a long process and you want candidates to feel taken care of throughout their journey. This will highly increase your chances of getting them to accept your offer when the time comes.

What does the recruiter interview covers:

• Explanation of the role and description of the company and culture
• Screening of the candidate’s overall experience (Education, roles and responsibilities, main achievements, reasons for leaving, etc.)
• Clarification of the red flags (Breaks in between 2 roles, use of “we” instead of “I”, etc.)
• Validation of the technical musts for the role
• Quick evaluation of the culture fit?
• Salary levels and expectations
• Current candidate search status (Are they interviewing elsewhere? What type of role and company? What stage of the process are they at? etc.)
• Candidate motivation (This is particularly important when the candidate is a referral or a head hunted candidate, and it will help greatly at closing time)
• Candidate details (Notice period, work permit, etc.)

?? Even if you do not have a recruiter, this step should NOT be skipped! Have someone else in the organisation do it (HR, Admin, etc.), but make sure it gets done.?

Once these questions have been covered here, they should not be asked again. Whereas the recruiter interview provides a general overview of the candidate, the other interviews should deep dive into the candidate’s technical fit and culture fit.?

2/ The technical-fit interview:

This interview stage will focus on validating the candidate has the relevant skills and experience to do the job. This interview is typically conducted by the hiring manager and may be another member of the team too.

The objective is to see what the candidate would do and how they would behave in the role. And the best way to do this is by using behavioural questions (see below).

On top of that the interviewer should validate the candidates’ understanding of the role and provide additional information that the recruiter could not share.

3/ The culture-fit interview:

Similarly to the technical interview, the cultural interview is meant for a deep dive into how the candidate would do and how they would behave in a company like yours. Every company is different in the way they operate and while a candidate may be technically brilliant and performing in their current organisation, it does not mean they will thrive in YOUR environment.

On top of that the interviewer should validate the candidates’ understanding of the company business and provide additional information on what it is like to work in your organisation.

SECOND, choose your questions well!

I think it is now a known fact that questions like “Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses” are to be banned. But what should we replace them with??

?? The quality of the questions the interviewer asks defines the quality of the data the candidate shares. And the best format of questions to deep dive into a candidate’s technical and culture fit are behavioural questions.

?? Behavioural questions are similar to case studies, but in an interview. These questions are designed to focus on how a candidate behaves in different situations to reveal their personality, abilities and skills.

Each question can take up to 20 minutes to be answered. The objective is to go through one specific situation and understand the candidate's thought process. The question can be using past experience scenarios (Situational: Tell me about a time when you ….), or using theoretical scenarios (Hypothetical: Imagine that you are…, what would you do?).?

Examples of behavioural questions:?

• Tell me about a time when you had to defend a decision you made even though other important people were opposed to your decision.
• Describe a time when you had to develop a unique strategy to meet the competing needs of various stakeholders.
• In the past, how have you obtained and incorporated customer feedback into your organization’s planning and service standards? Give specific examples.
• Imagine that your manager asks you to do something that you suspect will not work or even may have a negative impact on the business. What would you do??

Prepare some follow-up questions to really dive into the details of the situation and the HOW and WHY of their behaviours.

Examples of follow-up questions:

• How did you end up in this situation?
• How did you find out it was a problem?
• How did you come up with this solution?
• Why did you think it was the right solution?
• How did your manager/customer/team react?
• What was the outcome? Was this the expected outcome?
• What were your main learnings from this?
• If you were to do this again, would you do it the same way? Why?

?? IMPORTANT: The objective is not to do a 360 assessment of the candidate: It is better to assess a few skills well and rely on your colleagues to assess the other ones than to assess all skills badly twice ;-)

Now you are all set for your interviews!

?? But don’t forget that an interview is not just about assessing the candidate. It is about attracting the candidate too. So be gentle, have a genuine interest in the candidate, listen attentively, be careful about what your body language says (bored, irritated...) and be a good ambassador of your company ??

You can find out more about Candidate Experience here .

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About the author:

Anne Caron is an international speaker, author and People Strategy expert. Drawing on her 10 years' experience as a senior HR executive at Google, she set up her consulting practice in 2015 to support leaders in building high performing and positive organisations. Through her experience working with entrepreneurs, she developed a practical methodology for startups to grow the right organisation and teams, which she describes in her book?From Zero to 1,000: The Organisational Playbook For Startups .

Find out more about Anne Caron:?www.annecaronconsulting.com