I am an unapologetic extrovert who loves meeting new people. Whenever I have seen an interview on my schedule, I would look forward to that slot in the day. For me, interviews were an opportunity to meet someone and potentially learn something or make a new connection to someone interesting. It took a while for me to learn to assess effectively. I had the opportunity to attend a session on hiring at Prism HR Live, the user conference for our HR software. The speaker was Francis J. Flynn, The Paul E. Holden Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University. His talk focused on analytics work done by Google on their hiring process. He described how Google measured the assessment effectiveness of every assessor, essentially by tracking what percentage of those recommended by each assessor were retained and performed well. The talk and the data he shared, debunked some of my ideas about effective assessing. And over the last month or so, I had the opportunity to put into practice what I learned. We were hiring three people on our team. We hired three awesome people that are all off to a good start. Too early to tell if we hit a bullseye with all three, but I am optimistic. Here is what I learned:
Clear Job Requirements (including Comp)
A clear job description is critical, as well as a fresh compensation benchmark, this allows a clear connection between years of experience and certain skills, and how valuable they are in the market. These are helpful to ensure the hiring manager has confidence to effectively navigate the offer and negotiation portion of the process. It also gives clear direction to the person performing the pre-screening, make sure the candidate is not over or under qualified and is in the compensation range. And it gives the opportunity to share the range with the candidate in a transparent way. This ensures expectations are clear and no one wastes time.
Assessors All Ask The Same Questions
I had always divided up the competencies and different assessors assessed on the areas where they had depth. I learned from the Google analysis, this approach reduced the effectiveness of assessment decisions and brought it back to the hiring manager wading through various input, but being the only one assessing on the whole role. By defining a common interview guide, having each person assess on each competency independently and assesses on the whole role so their recommendation has the full view.
Save It for the Debrief
When assessors don't share any information with each other until the debrief session, the group gets the benefit of each assessors independent thoughts (vs group think influencing the outcome.) In the debrief, by discussing each question and how each candidate performed on that area, it makes it so each assessor gets the full picture. Each assessor makes a recommendation on the full view and can compare what other assessors gathered that they did not in their interview. Sometimes, what was most interesting is what the candidate said that was different or the same to different assessors. Ultimately assessors need to recommend to hire or not, and rank the candidates on each key area, and then the hiring manager needs to make the final decision with all of that input.
Not Too Many Assessors
After three assessors, adding more to the process produces minimal improvement in assessment decisions. You can have more than three assessors, there just isn't any return on the time. Sometimes people are involved in assessing so they don't feel left out, or they will need to have a relationship with the person or role once on board. These things can be separated. I left with a clear focus on limiting the involvement in assessing and moving relationship meetings to post assessment and pre/post hire depending on the situation.
Only Individual Interviews
As a former engineer, there is a small voice in my head that is always striving to create efficiency. Group interviews seemed like a way to get things done more quickly. However, I began to understand through my own experience as well as what I learned in the Professor's talk, how power and personality make group interviews less effective. People in the group who have less power or who are more introverted will ask fewer questions and will pick up on the subtle ques of the person with the most power and group think takes over. The value of having multiple people involved is lost, a similar outcome can be achieved with just having the most extroverted/ person with the most power do the interview.
30 Minutes is Enough
I had always scheduled 45 minutes to an hour. I learned that 30 minutes is sufficient. We make first impressions quickly, and a basic assessment can be completed efficiently in 30 minutes if you focus on assessing vs selling the role. I used to spend a lot of time selling the organization and the role, I now save that for the offer process.
Reflect on Potential Bias
Unconscious bias is a powerful force, mostly because it is unintentional and sneaky. You don't realize the effect it is having on your decisions. I often think about key demographic or physical or personal characteristics of a candidate after the interview. Did these characteristics make me judge them harder or easier? Should I adjust for that? I also think about my general mood at the time, was I grumpy (or happy) to start? The reflection on this alone can help you calibrate and limit the impact of this force.
In summary, I have brought some needed "science" to the interviewing process. It figures, balancing art and science always brings a better outcome.