When it comes to hiring, often the final decision lies in the interviewer’s hands. How a candidate “does” in an interview is expected to be predictive of how good or bad of an employee they will be.
However, this reasoning is completely flawed. The interview is the single most vulnerable step when it comes to unconscious bias creeping in and causing the selection of a candidate based on “gut instinct” instead of data.
[Related: See 4 examples of unconscious bias in recruitment.]
On average, an employer will interview 6 to 10 candidates and finalists will have gone through 2-3 rounds of interviews before an offer is made. That’s a massive time investment in just one stage of the hiring process, and it only makes sense to ensure it is as productive and accurate as possible, especially in regard to Quality of Hire.
Since interviews loom so large in the eyes of recruiters, candidates, and hiring managers, it’s no surprise most employers rely heavily on them for the final decision about which candidate to employ.
However, the interview alone should never be the main factor in a hiring decision. Here’s why.
An interviewer is just as likely to pick a candidate that looks and sounds like them or who has a similar background (such as a home state, favorite sports team, or identical alma mater) as they are to pick the best candidate for the job.
In fact, one could argue that skills and attributes fall quickly by the wayside in many interview scenarios as the interviewer and candidate fall into “chatting” and the decision is made without even examining the hard data or making adequate comparisons between candidates.
What does this mean? Interviewing is weighted heavily in hiring decisions, but it’s actually not the best choice when choosing the best candidate. Crosschq Data Labs research currently shows that only 9% of interview scores correlate to Quality of Hire.
Interestingly, the research revealed that most interviewers are not skilled or experienced at the task; more than half had only done one isolated interview. Overall, 76% of interviewers only conduct one interview per year, and 87% of interviewers conduct less than three interviews per year.
When looking at the few interviewers who did higher numbers of interviews (12 interviews or more per year), there was a slight correlation between higher interview scores and post-hire performance evaluations.
The ability to assess and identify talent is a skill that requires practice, development, and training; not all hiring managers are equally skilled or qualified to be leading interviews (another argument for collaborative hiring in order to reduce unconscious bias.)
Developing and training interviewers should be a priority to achieve talent acquisition goals. Structured interviewing by a seasoned interviewer accompanied by a team of potential coworkers and associated supervisors is the best approach.
TalentWall™ by Crosschq makes it easy to follow candidates through the entire recruitment process, with note-taking capability available to all stakeholders at each stage. As candidates make their way from application through candidate checking to the interview, front-runners should become apparent.
After an offer is made, Quality of Hire can be tracked through the employee’s first 100 days. Those who have an impressive Quality of Hire score can be traced back to the interviewer, and data gathered over time to help identify which interviewers make the best talent decisions.
[Related: Measure your Quality of Hire with this FREE Scorecard. Download now.]
Using evidence-based analysis to identify those that are best at surfacing talent allows organizations to designate lead interviewers and build effective and collaborative interview teams around them.
This approach to interviewing can reduce unconscious bias, help candidates get a feel for the people they will be working with, and increase the chances that hiring decisions are made based on facts, not feelings.
Crosschq Analytics can also be helpful in the post-interview phase, allowing feedback to be gathered from both interviewers and interviewees, and evaluating employee Quality of Hire during their first 100 days and beyond.
Being prepared for the interview is key. Getting “interview-ready” is more than just setting a time to meet with a candidate or skimming their resume: to conduct a good interview, the interviewer needs to be familiar with the job description and responsibilities, the candidate's strengths and weaknesses, and the team the new hire will be working with.
Knowing what interview questions to ask is a good first step. Getting as many of the teams in the room as possible for the actual interview is another. Interview scheduling can be a major bottleneck in the hiring process, and 60% of recruiters say they routinely lose candidates while trying to schedule an interview.
[Related: See what interview and hiring red flags you need to know. Now.}
Scheduling tools can streamline this segment of the funnel, syncing various calendars and finding the earliest possible day and time to get everyone in a room - virtual or otherwise. Meanwhile, continual communication with the candidate can help keep them engaged and prevent drop-off.
Utilizing a cheat sheet to ensure the interview stays on track can help prevent a conversation from veering into a non-relevant territory, like discussions of sports teams or colleges. After the interview, getting each collaborative interviewer to submit their feedback and assign a score to each candidate can help narrow the choices down.
While traditional recruiting metrics may view qualitative metrics such as volume of interviews and progression, a more modern approach focuses on the quality of each candidate, and ultimately the hire.
Making the interviewing process more effective and accurate depends heavily on the approach and the expertise and experience of the lead interviewer. By working to create interviewing processes and building teams around the most qualified individuals in the chain of command, organizations can improve interviews as a Quality of Hire predictor.
A final word about interviews: scoring should always be based on simple ratings on a 1 to 10 or 1 to 5 scale (pick one and stick with it) across a battery of no more than 5-8 simple questions about how the interviewer evaluated the candidate across key candidate quality indicators.
These scores should be added to scores from candidate checking, assessments, and other pre-hire evaluations to arrive at a data-based final score. From there, the best decision can be made to heighten the chances of a new hire that will meet or exceed performance expectations and improve business outcomes.
Without a sensible candidate scoring system in place that is based on data points that can be confirmed through steps in the recruitment process (such as candidate checks, pre-hire assessments, and interviewing), making great hires will be a hit-or-miss situation.
To learn more about how Crosschq can increase the chances of hiring candidates with strong Quality of Hire potential, talk to one of our team experts for a free consultation. Schedule your one-on-one time here.