As an organization when your people are interviewing a potential candidate, they are also subconsciously advertising your brand to these candidates. Yet very few organizations give this process due consideration. In almost all organizations we typically have a pre-determined protocol that runs in a sequence in which a candidate would be interviewed, or the minimum rounds of interviews a candidate has to go through. However, very rarely do organizations have a process to evaluate & enhance the interviewing competency of their own people who conduct these interviews. In many organizations, apart from the hiring manager, whoever is available at that point of time, or a person who is senior enough to conduct the interview is chosen to undertake this task. In fact, conducting an interview often acts as an intrusion in day job of the interviewer, rather than a planned responsibility. Hence the interview, instead of being driven by definite guidelines and evaluation parameters based upon competencies, gets driven by gut feeling of the interviewer.
To quote one of my former team members, who went through a grilling interviewing session recently (and whom I know to be highly competent technically) “In my case, the interviewer got carried away by the superiority of her knowledge and was trying to dominate the proceedings. Instead of focusing on bringing out the best in me, she seemed to take perverse pleasure in trying to corner me on one technical aspect or the other. Her modus operandi seemed to keep on hammering till she found chinks in the armour. Then she gloated over the fact of having proven to me that her knowledge and/or ability was better than mine.”
Well, considering that any interviewer typically is at least a grade or two above the position being hired for, it is obvious that the candidate may not be as technically proficient as the interviewer. Hell, if they were, why would they be interviewing for a lower grade and not vying for the interviewer’s role instead!
Another common pitfall is asking questions the wrong way. Consider this real scenario. A candidate cleared multiple interviews and was found suitable. The hiring manager (HM) wanted to probe how long the candidate was likely stay to with the organization. Let’s see what happened with the candidate at two different organizations.
HM1 to the candidate “What are your future plans? When do you intend to get married?” The candidate politely responded that she does not have any immediate plans as such and things would happen when they have to happen. Coming out, she felt the question to be an intrusion into her personal life, and did not take up the offer.
HM2 to the candidate “See, our products are quite complex and challenging to create, and it takes significant amount of time and effort on our part to train a new hire before they really start contributing. Given that context and while I’d want you to be here for very long, would you be willing to commit at least 2-3 years with us.” The candidate responded that she thrived in such challenging assignments and would definitely work towards long association and ended up accepting the offer.
Needless to say, while intention of hiring managers at both organizations was same, the way they articulated the situation made quite a diverse impression on the candidate influencing her final decision.
Hence it is important that as an organization you should:
- Build a role based, competency model for recruitment within the organization.
- Acknowledge, that your top technical resource need not be your best interviewer.
- Identify a set of people as your de-facto interviewers, and set aside some of their bandwidth for interviewing.
- Train and coach these interviewers in conducting interviews the right way.
A positive interviewing experience, even in cases where the candidate is found not suitable, helps reinforce a positive brand image of an organization.
