Helping New Interviewers Thrive (Part 2)

This is the second part of the series. If you haven’t already, you should read part one first.

Divide and Conquer Approach

One of the benefits to a new interviewer of a divide-and-conquer approach is that it lets people form a data-driven judgment of a specific slice of the candidate rather than attempting to judge the whole person in a 1-hour interview.

This is also emotionally easier for junior interviewers who may otherwise feel pressure to take a wait-and-see approach during candidate roundtables. Specifically: they may stay silent, wait for more senior interviewers to start forming a positive or negative consensus on the candidate, and then simply agree with it.

Ask the new interviewer to go after 2-3 specific facets of the role and have them only rate and provide data for those facets. New interviewers feel much more comfortable sharing a focused perspective vs. a holistic hire/no-hire—and, frankly, nobody can make a holistic hire/no-hire decision based on a single, short interview.

Interview Guides

Perhaps this is obvious, but please make sure that all team members—including new interviewers—have structured interview guides that they follow. Each interviewer for a given role should be asking the same initial questions from one candidate to the next. Follow-up questions are a different matter, of course—there is no “right” set of follow-ups that applies to all candidate stories, although there are certainly patterns at play.

Data-Shadowing

This refers to a calibrated interviewer double-checking the data interpretation of a new interviewer. This is only possible with great note-taking—another benefit of requiring your interview team to take good notes.

Most companies don’t have much structure or process around data-shadowing as they do actual live interview shadowing, but it is key. When a new interviewer assigns a rating to a given Facet, are they providing sufficient, accurate, and relevant data for that rating? In order to ascertain this, calibrated interviewers need to pay close attention to the standards by which the new interviewer has arrived at a given rating (e.g. a “3” vs. a “4” on a given facet). They should also ensure there’s a clear rubric in place—i.e., that we have a shared definition of what a “3” and “4” really means.

Additionally, many new interviewers may have subject-matter blind spots, either being too impressed, or not impressed enough, with the anecdotes of people outside of their field. Data shadowing can produce helpful team discussions to both level-up new interviewers and ensure everyone on the team is aligned and calibrated on where the “bar” is for a given aspect of a role.

Data First, Decision Second

When it’s time to make a group decision on a candidate, please make sure that everyone is invited to share their ratings and data in a judgment-free manner. I would encourage capturing data “blindly” whenever possible—i.e., each team member submits feedback to a central coordinator, who reveals the combined data set when it is complete. If this approach is not possible, at least consider having the junior interviewers speak first. When junior team members feel pressured to align with the emerging consensus from their senior colleagues, the entire process becomes tainted by bias.

Reward Good Interviewing

Consider the following question:

What rewards or recognition do you offer to your trusted, committed interviewers?

Companies that find a way to reward great interviewing—via shout-outs, additional compensation or otherwise—cultivate a culture where human capital assessment is inherently valued. Elevate your committed senior interviewers. Encourage long-term skill building in your junior interviewers. Establish an environment where it is a badge of honor to join that selective pool of people who get to take part in the essential task of human capital selection.