Why Interview Preparation Works

Recruitment Leaders! I bet your lowest conversion % is the first interview stage. Increasing conversion here will have a massive impact on your hiring results. Here is how my recruitment teams increased interview conversion and offer accept rates to boot ??

TLDR, its interview prep. Really good interview prep.

"But Luke, my recruiters have excellent interview prep you blithering buffoon! Why should I read further?!?"

Because a good email isn't good interview prep, it's just table stakes. I recommend taking these steps :

Step One - A 30 Minute Prep Session

From now on, when your recruiters book an interview, they also book in a 30 minute prep session with the candidate 2 days before. This prep session will cover :

1. Interview Structure : What kind of questions will be asked? On what topics??techniques for answering the questions in the best manner, ie maybe a STAR format for competency based quesitons.
2. The interviewer : Who are they, where do they fit in the business.
3. The team : What are they currently working on, what are their pain points, how do they communicate.
4. ALL candidate questions : Make sure there are no unanswered questions that could cause anxiety or lead to a drop out.

The purpose is two-fold. First, to remove any factors that could lead to a candidate with the required domain knowledge to fail the interview. eg, someone with good experience who isn't good at answering competency based questions.

Secondly, the recruiter is setting up a coach/athlete mentality with the candidate. Your recruiters are demonstrating that they are on the candidate's team. You want them going in feeling relaxed, confident, and 100% on their side. This, I believe also contributes to a higher offer accept rate as the recruiter has built more trust with the candidate.

Step Two - Interview Shadowing

From now on, your recruiters will shadow a first stage interview at least once. They don't have to understand it all, the purpose is allowing your recruiters to talk about the interview in the first person. There are lots of tiny details your recruiter picks up that adds value to candidate. The quirks of the tools they may be using, the subtleties in way questions are asked.

Step Three - Face to Face Feedback

To complete the prep sandwich, follow up with the candidate with a 10 min video call to go through their feedback in detail. This means the pros and cons, strengths weaknesses. No fluffy summaries, read out as much as you can verbatim where sensible (using your discretion).

This makes sure the candidate has full context for the next steps. I also recommend this for candidates who fail the interview, there should be no difference in the way they are treated.

It also re-enforces the trust your recruiters have built through the process and makes your recruiters stand out among their peers.

The Impact

There you have it. Now you might be thinking "ain't nobody got time for that!" I'm asking your recruiters to add 40 minutes per interview in calls and meetings. Well i'm going to prove you wrong with the awesome power of mathematics!!!!

You see by putting more effort in increasing the conversion at the first interview stage, you will make drastic reductions in the level of effort at the top of the funnel that can save DAYS of outreach and screen calls. I'll show you :

Here is a funnel that roughly represents a standard recruitment process for a technical role. And some rough, but generous conversions down the side.

With first stage conversion at a paltry 40%, you need 250 outreach and 25 screens to make a hire. Thats about 12 hours of screens and two weeks worth of sourcing.

Now see what happens if we increase only the conversion at first stage from 40% to 60%.

Your recruiter needs 111 outreach and 11 Screens. That's 6 hours of screens and a weeks sourcing. You also need less first interviews which saves your interviewers time.

Thats a saving of 6 hours per role and a week of sourcing. All because you put extra emphasis on interview prep.

I have seen them impact this extra high touch level of interview preparation has on the candidate experience and the knock on effects it has on the hiring goals of the businesses I support. I promise you that this works.