When you interview people for a job you are asked to make a judgment call on whether the people you interview are good enough and suitable for your company, but what makes you think you are good enough to do the interview and represent your company? Are you suitably trained to conduct a proper interview and make that decision yourself? I suspect not.
The vast majority of hiring managers whether they work in HR or not have never been trained how to interview people; the psychology, the questions to ask, what not to ask, how to decide who is good enough or what good enough looks like. Many will have the information needed to sell the company and the job to each candidate, but fail disastrously by simply asking the wrong questions, focusing on the wrong competencies in a person’s background appropriate to the role, not listening to the answers given and not exploring each answer or further.
I know some companies train and certify every manager before they are able to open a Requisition, before they are able to hold an interview. Why don’t more do it?
What is often forgotten in the recruitment process is the candidate. There are plenty of articles and blogs written about how poor the candidate experience is in the majority of companies, yet little attention is given to the quality of interviews.
Do you realise you could be missing out on very good talent for your organisation because your interview processes or the people doing the interviewing is substandard, boring and in some cases illegal.
In an interview a good candidate will be interviewing you and your company. Or they would be if given the chance to. They too have to make a very important choice. To a greater extent the decision the candidate has to make is far more important and crucial than the decision you have to make. If they get the decision wrong it could screw up their life; if you get it wrong you rectify and move on. Candidates therefore must be given the opportunity to represent themselves and as most interviews follow a typical Q&A format the right questions need to be asked to elicit the appropriate answers or at least stimulate the appropriate level of discussion.
I will give you an example from recent personal experience. I was being interviewed for Director, Global Recruitment by an HRD. The role was very senior and of a strategic leadership nature, yet a ridiculous amount of time was spent going into the detail of a project I worked on in early 2008 that was purely transactional and not at all relevant to the role I was being interviewed for.
Where were the questions about,leadership, management, the ATS they are about to acquire and deploy, my thoughts related to the announcements from LinkedIn made just that week, to the use of social media, candidate experience, employer brand, the impact of the AWR or many others more relevant to the most senior resourcing role in the organisation. I think you get the point.
This is not a rant nor is it a specific observation on that one incident – there have been others in the last 7 weeks – this post is purely an observation about the lack of attention and lack of priority given to one of the most important jobs/functions in a company; that of an interviewer. It wont surprise you therefore to know that I have since found out that this HRD has interviewed nearly 20 people for the role - it is clear that he does not actually know what he needs to achieve as part of the organisational structure, what he is looking for, i.e what it takes to be the leader of the Resourcing function and how to interview for said people.
So before you judge a candidate be sure you judge your interviewers’ ability, otherwise you will be failing your candidates and losing out on the good people you set out to acquire.
How many companies train and certify their managers before they let them near an interview room?
Do you?
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