Tuesday April 16, 2024

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Crafting Your Interview Process

Hiring is important. A company is a collection of people and processes—and having great people is essential to success. Bad employees lead to inefficiency and poor work culture. However, a great interview process can drastically improve your chances of making a great hire.

The goal of the interview process is to be efficient and effective while minimizing bias. During the interview, the objective is to both understand if the candidate is a good fit while selling them on the opportunity at your company. The best candidates are looking for career growth opportunities and you should do your best to present your position as one that will be beneficial for them.

Assessment protocol
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Assessment protocol

Written (email) correspondence

The first point of contact between us and potential hires is usually a text correspondence. The purpose of this is to funnel candidates to a phone screen. It is important to respond to any and all inquiries with swiftness, kindness, and professional courtesy.

Typically, a job description will ask an applicant to send a few pieces of information or documents (e.g. resume, working hours, availability, position interested in, etc…). If any pieces of information are missing, correspond with the applicant until everything is in order.

Once all the information requested by the job description is collected, schedule a phone screen!

Phone screen (30 minutes)

In an effort to reduce bias in the hiring process, seeing the candidate’s physical appearance is delayed for as long as possible. Italicized sections are script suggestions.

Taking notes for the phone screen

Welcome and review job/motivation (5 minutes)

First, provide a short overview of the job (1-2 minutes).

Then, ask:

Can you provide a quick overview of how your background relates?
What’s your current job-hunting status? How long have you been looking?
What factors are you looking for in a new job? (pause)
Why is having ___ and ___ important to you? (factors being looked for in new job)

Delay impact of first impression (1 minute)

Write your initial emotional reaction to the candidate. This will be compared to your emotional reaction to the candidate at the end of the interview.

Determine if the candidate’s phone personality and communication style would help or hinder job performance.

Review work history and achiever pattern (10-15 minutes)

Please tell me about your most recent job. What was your position, the company, your duties, the team you’ve been on, and the big projects handled? (Repeat for the last few jobs)

For each position, record title, promotions, basic duties, 360deg team chart, impact, challenges faced, and any recognition received.

Ask why the person changed jobs (look for a pattern of career growth)

If the person is an achiever with stalled growth, or the current job is unsatisfactory, our job may be a good move.

Note: promotions, special awards and bonuses, big projects, and being pushed by a mentor all suggest a pattern of achievement.

Most significant accomplishment question (10-12 minutes)

Can you please tell me about your most significant career accomplishment or project you’re most proud of?

One major project we’re working on right now is ___. Please tell me about something comparable you’ve worked on before.

Try to understand the candidate’s accomplishment. If the person possesses the achiever pattern and has a relevant, reasonable achievement, the candidate should be considered a semi-finalist.

Determine interest and recruit

While we’ve seen a few other very strong candidates, I’m also impressed with some of the work you’ve done. Based on what you know now, is this position something you consider more seriously?

For semi-finalists, now is the time to describe why this position would be a forward career move. Focus on the importance and satisfaction of the work, and a faster growth rate.

Technical Review

Technical Reviews will vary depending on the specific skills the company is looking for. Some companies prefer phone/video call screens, take-home assessments, pair programming sessions, or even onsite interviews. Take homes often offer the most comprehensive technical indicator as it most closely mimics the real work environment, but the downside is the time commitment which may cause a strong candidate to drop out of the process. There is also a higher potential for cheating. For programming roles, pair programming may offer a time efficient and balanced review process where companies can evaluate the candidate’s problem-solving and communication process. There are a few useful tools for this.

Hiring council interview (30 minutes)

Assemble a hiring council of 3-5 members to perform panel interviews. The objective of the council is to balance out individual bias and perform a consistent evaluation of all candidates. The hiring council will do a 30-minute video interview with time for questions at the end. After all interviews, a separate debrief call should be booked to discuss the candidate and make a decision.

Welcome and review job/motivation (1-2 minutes)

If the candidate has been phone screened:

Based on your other communications with our team, please give me a quick overview of your thoughts on the job, and what you’ve discussed with others so far.

Else, ask the intro questions from the phone screen:

Can you provide a quick overview of how your background relates?
What’s your current job-hunting status? How long have you been looking?
What factors are you looking for in a new job? (pause)
What is having ___ and ___ important to you?

Measure impact of first impression

Write your immediate emotional reaction to the candidate- relaxed, uptight, or neutral.

Write the cause. At the end of the interview go over this again to expose any biases.

Review work history and background (10 minutes)

Please tell me about your most recent job. What was your position, the company, your duties, the team you’ve been on, and the big projects handled? (Repeat for the last few jobs)

Assess a few major accomplishments (5 minutes)

Can you please tell me about your most significant career accomplishment or project you’re most proud of?

One major project we’re working on right now is ___. Please tell me about something comparable you’ve worked on before.

I’d like to focus on ___. Can you tell me a major accomplishment that best demonstrates this?

Evaluate response to feedback (5 minutes)

Can you please tell me about a situation when your work was criticized?

It would be considered a plus if they acknowledge that the criticism/s they received in the past helped them, instead of hindering them from reaching their career’s greatest accomplishments

Assess major team accomplishments (5 minutes)

Can you please tell me about a major team accomplishment? Consider one where you lead the team and one where you were a key member of the team.

One major problem we’re now facing is ___. How would you go about addressing this? What would you need to know and how would you plan it out?

Let the candidate ask questions

Based on what we’ve discussed, do you have any questions?

Recruit using win-win hiring opportunity

While I’ve seen a few other very strong candidates, I’m also impressed with your work. Is this role of interest? Why? Why not?

Measure first impression again

Go back and re-measure your emotional impression of the candidate. How will first impressions impact on-the-job performance?

Compare this impression to the one from the beginning of the interview and identify any biases.