In a world where there are more applicants than you expected for a job posting, effectively identifying great candidates AND using your hiring team’s time wisely is critical. Interviewing can be incredibly time consuming, and processes can easily get out of control and cause unnecessary roadblocks and wasted time. Here are 5 simple tips to help you get your interview process under control and ensure your team works efficiently and effectively to find, interview, and offer roles to great people:
1. Consider adding pre-screening questions for the firm requirements in your application process. Many job boards, including LinkedIn now offer the option to select prescreening questions for hard skill requirements like “Do you have 5+ years of bookkeeping experience” or, “Do you have 3+ years of B2B sales experience?” Adding pre-screening questions can help you filter applicants according to how well they match your criteria which means the people you look at first will be a closer match to your overall requirements.
2. Discuss your interview process ahead of time with decision makers for the role, working to limit the number of interviews and steps where possible. A first phone screen with a recruiter or HR rep is smart to flush out key hard skill and soft skill requirements, and culture fit – but after this point, good candidates should go over quickly to hiring managers for a second interview. This means hiring managers need to be prepared to prioritize having these conversations quickly. If multiple people are involved in the second interview, consider having them interview jointly to save time.
3. Use an automated scheduling tool. This makes scheduling interviews a lot faster and easier. Tools like Calendly, Doodle, and Cal.com are examples and most offer free trials to test their software. This helps you identify quick options for scheduling, particularly when multiple people are involved. Each person can designate open calendar time for interviews and this syncs with Outlook or Gmail so everyone’s calendars stay updated and organized.
4. Create questions that are rooted in the problems you need this person to solve. If you’ve had a string of bad hires, or people who did not deliver the results you needed, what is causing that? For example, if meeting productivity goals is the biggest challenge, have a specific question or two that addresses how someone will navigate that. If your sales are down and someone is trying to convince you they’re really great at B2B sales, create a question around this that is rooted in one of the major challenges you’ve had with sales reps in the past. Never ask simple “yes” or “no” questions. Always ask open ended questions. This is the difference between saying “We’ve struggled to find sales reps who were fearless about making regular cold calls in the past. Are you open to making cold calls?” AND “We’ve found that cold calling is most of our sales reps’ least favorite thing to do, but it’s a requirement for the job in order to meet your goals. How many cold calls were you making per week in your last job, what was your approach, and how do you motivate yourself to do this every week?”
5. Time kills deals, so it’s important to move from a strong second or final interview to the offer stage quickly. In order for this to work, hiring managers need to communicate with HR promptly to ensure offer letters are issued quickly and accurately, and that all the necessary pre-hire screening information is communicated to candidates.
Have a recruiting or HR question? Reach out to us by phone if you want to speak to a human, or by email if you want to start a virtual conversation. We love helping growing companies thrive and we’d love to hear from you!
