Are you approaching interviews with the right attitude? A guide for hiring managers.

You have just interviewed a candidate for a vacancy in your team, for a role that, while unfilled, is adding to your workload and those of your team members.

There is an old proverb which states “The palest ink is better than the best memory.” While the memory of what was discussed is fresh, now is the time to put your thoughts down in a structured and consistent way. The time set aside for an interview should also have an additional 10-15 minutes after the candidate leaves for you to put your thoughts in order (having a good interview feedback form will help this).

An extra 10-15 minutes!? I know, you are busy. Well, you are going to remain very busy while that job remains vacant so investing time to find the right person is the only way to reduce your workload.

There is a great deal of research that shows completing notes after a meeting or interview is far more effective than writing copious notes during the meeting (when you are writing notes you are not fully engaged in a discussion). Change note-taking during a meeting to simply writing down the odd word to act as an aide-memoire for the review after the meeting finishes.

Doing this not only helps you but also ensures you provide useful feedback to HR and recruitment agencies on candidates they are providing for you.

There are a few things to consider when you are deciding if a candidate should move forward in the recruitment process or not.

Let’s deal with a few big issues to get you in the right mindset.

The perfect candidate does not exist.

• You cannot have someone with all the behaviors, skills, and experience you want, you must compromise. It is time to stop waiting for a miracle.
• The candidates you have interviewed were presented to you for a reason, HR and, if they are used, recruitment agencies, have already screened many candidates and these are the ones who were the closest match to the Job Description (it is the only thing they have to check against candidates’ CVs so make sure it is accurate and up-to-date).

Stop focusing on the ‘reasons’ to reject.

• As the perfect candidate does not exist, finding things that the candidate lacks is quite easy. The more we focus on these ‘problems’ the more we are unconsciously convincing ourselves the candidate can’t do the job. Unless you are dealing with a fresh graduate, likely, the candidate is already doing a job that involved many of the duties and skills you need.

Make your default attitude “Why I should hire them. What do they bring to the job and the team?”

• Prioritising the plus points will help you consider how they can fit in and where they will need help.
• This mindset will help change the ‘reasons to reject’ into ‘areas of development’

You will need to train and coach them.

• You, yes you, you are the one responsible for this, you can get others to help but if you do not plan this then get ready to start looking for a replacement in a few months because you are not going to help this person get through probation and become a productive team member.

Now we have this clear, you can prepare your thoughts on the candidate.

It helps if you have used an interview plan, a plan that ensured you asked about their behaviours, experience, and knowledge about key aspects of the work (the key aspects, there will be other less important aspects but the key ones are the areas you need someone to be competent in).

Remember, you probably want a shopping list of things but only focusing on the most important will give you more choice of candidates and remove that need to find the perfect one.

Interview plans and review forms follow a similar structure. They should contain sections focusing on the key skills, experience, and important behaviours but also sections about overall preparedness for the interview, what questions did the candidate ask, motivations, and, for the review form, areas of development (where does the candidate need support to get the level you ideally need). The interview form would contain questions to ask the candidate concerning each section and the review form space for your thoughts.

Whilst other people may be involved in the interview and tools can contribute, the interview between the hiring manager and the candidate is the only time these two people can begin to develop that all-so-important working relationship.