Many appointments fail because of a poor interview/er.

You’ve written the job description, the essential and desirable lists, a brilliant advert, fantastic candidate questions, and have set aside time in the diary to interview the chosen few. What could possibly go wrong now – apart from the interviewee not turning up and interviewer using the wrong selection criteria.

I recently completed a survey of some 30 plus SME business owners, which suggested the majority of appointments are made on emotions and first impressions, rather than the answers to behavioural and competency questions.

• 48% of those surveyed were driven by emotion and feelings, (we are people after all) looking for a “vibe in the room, a fit with my small team, a sense of humour, punctuality, appearance, eye contact, and availability”.
• 20% selected candidates on “conversational skills, approachability, common sense and what they can bring to the team.”
• 32% took all of the above into account, along with scored answers to specific questions against a pre-defined, easy to apply definition of what constitutes a poor or good answer.

The wrong approach and the wrong selection criteria has (and will continue to) put the wrong people, in the wrong jobs, in the wrong companies - resulting in everyone involved, wasting time, money, energy and sleep, before returning back to where they started 3, 6 or 9 months earlier facing another round of interviews.

Thinking of my best and worst interviews.

My best interview must be my first career interview which took place during the university milk round nothing to do with delivering milk, but the term used to describe the best companies coming on campus to milk the best candidates before they had even sat their finals. ?I was so relaxed having never really been interviewed before and felt very little pressure as this job was nothing more than an access to a car and free weekends.

(I’d already decided that leisure experiences were going to be massive in the UK and I planned to own an Outdoor Pursuits Centre, the first step to which was gaining some outdoor pursuits experience and was already in possession of a deferred place on one of only two programmes in the UK that trained in all things OPC - mountaineering, caving, climbing, camping, hiking, sailing, kayaking, skiing...).

So, I felt no pressure and what they saw and got, was me. A second interview followed, followed by lunch, and I’d received a job offer 8 months before I’d even graduated.

I’ve since read the company I joined for the car and the weekends, reject 97% of applicants - that’s another reason I believe in miracles!

(six months after starting work I’d not had time to climb a single peak over 2,000 feet let alone the 20 I’d been tasked with, but I loved the job and released my held place for someone who really wanted a career in OPCs).

?

The interview takeaways are RELAX and be YOURSELF.

Which can be difficult in this cyber age of video pitches, zoom interviews, screen tests, assessment centres, psychometric testing, team building exercises, seven stage interview processes and that’s just for the graduate starters.

The discussion consensus amongst the SME owners was an ideal mix of scoring and gut. I once heard Janet Street-Porter, describe this as a dinner party test. “Could I sit next to this person for three hours over dinner? If the answer is yes, I knew I could work with them.”

?

HOWEVER, and there’s always a HOWEVER, there needs to be an increased sensitivity to and a safeguard against, potential claims of discrimination in the interview or the interview process. Some in the room believed there needed to be two interviewers in the room, both making their own notes, the questions need to be the same if asked a little differently in the conversation to illicit the response on the same said topic. On the upside, the notes, and questions (which had to be held by you for 12 months) also enable you to assess candidates fairly against the job role and other candidates, as well as reference meaningful feedback. At which point, I default to my usual recommendation of “refer to your HR specialist for guidance before acting” on this discussion.

?

Which is just what I did by calling Tarnya Brink (FCIPD) at Invictus HR and asked her firstly about the GDPR implications:

“The Data Protection Act 2018 controls how personal data is used and one of the requirements is that data is only retained for as long as is necessary.?Ideally companies will have a Data Protection Policy and Retention guide which sets out how information is used and how long different aspects of personal data is retained.”

Secondly, do the interview documents really have to be held for 12 months?

“As a rule, we recommend that recruitment documents (CV, Application, Interview Notes) are kept for 6 months, or longer if you have specific permission from the applicant to retain their documents for longer, e.g. if you know you are likely to recruit for the same position again within a relatively short period.?A 6-month retention period means that if there is a challenge on the grounds of discrimination for a protected characteristic, which they have 3 months less one day days to submit to ACAS, you have the evidence to support the decision you made.”

?

Once you have your questions, check that they are job role and job requirement related, and focused on understanding how the candidates experience fulfils the role.

For candidate comparison purposes, you’ll need a score card for each candidates’ answers – Below is one I created 20 years ago which seems to be just as relevant today.

Answer to the question?/ Developed answer with examples of related experience

5 ??????????Very Good ?????????????????????????????VG with more than 1 related example.

4 ??????????Good??????????????????????????????????????Good with a related example.

3 ??????????Standard?????????????????????????????????Standard examples.

2???????????Lacking???????????????????????????????????Unrelated examples.

1???????????Poor????????????????????????????????????????No examples given.

?

It doesn’t have to be complicated, it doesn’t need 10 scores, or long definition sentences; the more you’re writing the less you are listening to and looking at the person in front of you.??????????

?

And my worst interview.

There was a time when the recruitment agency would fill your diary with their shortlisted candidates, for you to spend all day in a hotel room asking 7 or 8 different hopefuls the same questions one after another. Notetaking was critical because I can assure you by 3pm, it’s all becoming a blur and it was always the 4pm candidate that cancelled and you had to wait in the hope the five o’clock would turn up, before you could head home after the days debrief at 6.30pm.

If it was a role that required driving, my checklist always included a note to check their driving licence, on this particular day, a preferred candidate had forgotten to bring it with him. At the second he’d forgotten it because he’d just buried his father. At the end of his first day he met my bosses boss for a handshake and chat. Handshakes all round, I was reminded to get a copy of his driving licence which I duly did before waving him off in his new car, with sales samples, fuel card and cash float.

On the way home I called in at a police station and asked them to interpret the coding and letters on his paper licence - in short, he had served a ban and was close to serving a second ban!

The following day he phoned in sick. ?I took the news to my Boss who took me and the news to his Boss, which in its self was a lesson. Between them they very quickly agreed the following plan. My role was to look, listen, and learn. The three of us drove to our new employee’s home. I sat in the car and waited for my Boss and his Boss to return with the keys to his car, company documentation, selling samples and what remained of his cash float.

I drove back on my own, in the recovered car giving me plenty of time to reflect on the lesson learned, and never repeated.