Selecting Members to Interview Your Candidates
Conducting interviews is an essential aspect of the hiring process as it helps you determine the most qualified candidates to take on roles in the company. Hiring the wrong person or people can have significant repercussions on your business, so knowing which candidates to choose is critical. One way to ensure you select the right people to join your company is by assembling a competent interview team who can get the job done.
There is no fixed rule as to how you build your interview team as it can depend on your company’s size, objectives, and protocols. However, you must take your time to plan out this team, as the members will ultimately be deciding who to hire. Having a clear and structured interview process, along with the right people to handle it, will be necessary in preventing wrong hiring decisions.
Who to Include In the Interview Team
Depending on how your hiring process is structured, you may have a recruitment team who pre-screens candidates based on their application and a hiring manager who screens a candidate for basic qualifications as it relates to the job description. Next, the first in-person interview should be conducted by the hiring manager and perhaps one key senior member of the team. This is an opportunity to get a basic understanding of the credentials, skills and personality of the candidate. Once they pass this level a second, and possibly final in-person interview should be conducted.
During the second round of interviews, you will want to include team members and a human resources representative to determine additional skills and company culture fit. This also serves the candidate when they get to meet other members of the team so they can determine if the team fits with their desired work environment. If the position requires a lot of interaction with another department, perhaps inviting a member of that team to interview as well.
In any case, having a member of your company’s upper management or executive team will also be essential. Their role will be to see whether a candidate aligns with the company’s long-term goals and vision and learn about their career ambitions. At this point in the interview, they will be focusing more on the big picture and how a potential hire fits into the company as a whole.
How to Designate Roles
While some of the interview roles may be obvious (like the hiring manager and human resources), others from the team should be designated interview roles. Start with the job description and assign each interviewer one job-related question and one culture-related question for which to ask. The point is to NOT have every interviewer ask the candidate the same question, which is not only nonproductive, but also tedious for the candidate. A pre-interview meeting with all the interviewers would be a good time to come up with this strategy and everyone can partake in the interview with confidence. (For tips on how to prepare your interview team, read our blog: Preparing Your Interview Team Preparing Your Interview Team)
Several considerations have to be made when choosing new people to hire into a company. As such, building a strong and capable interview team is key to making the right hiring decisions. By having a diverse set of people who can each offer unique perspectives, you can cover all the important bases in the interview.
Sources: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/training-staff-to-be-better-interviewers.aspx