Hiring the Best: The Interview

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Hiring the BestThe Interview
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• If I put a person into a job and he or she does
  not perform, I have made a mistake.
• Peter Drucker

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Steps in the Hiring Process
Define job
Interview Panel/ Selection Committee
Source candidates
Interview
Human Resource
Select
Integrate
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Interview Panel

• Composition - diverse
• Roles and responsibilities
• Decision-making
• Confidentiality
• Interviewing candidates

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Before Interview

• Job Description
• Relevant reporting relationships
• Mission, goals, objectives and strategies
• Details of responsibilities and duties (including
  teamwork and cooperation)
• Expected assignments
• Compensation
• Salary
• Benefits
• Performance Expectations
• Specific performance expected
• How performance will be measured
• Envision the ideal employee
• Qualifications, skills, experience
• Motivation, interests
• Personality

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The Interview Format

• Introduction / icebreaker
• Set the agenda
• Verify the resume
• Preview the job
• Ask questions
• Answer candidates questions
• Advise the candidate on process
• Thank the candidate

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What we want to do

• To assess attributes, attitudes, and personality
  characteristics
• To identify past behavior as an indicator of
  future behavior
• To assess chemistry and fit (values)

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What we are up against

• Confirmation bias
• First impressions that we then try to confirm.
• Stereotyping
• Halo effect
• Remember Susan Boyle
• Comfort with similar people
• Situational influences
• Interviewer differences

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What we are up against (cont.)

• Tendency to be unstructured
• Tendency to forget
• Tendency to remember only negatives
• Pressure to hire
• Interviewing order in which applicants appear
• Interviewer mood

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Compensating for bias

• Attentiveness (privacy, no interruptions)
• Objectivity (suspend judgment)
• Active listening (encourage applicant to talk)
• Arrange setting to put interviewee at ease.
• Structure the interview
• Always ask the same questions in same order
• Never hire after one interview.

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More Interviewing strategies

• Dont talk too much.
• Ask lots of open-ended behavioral and situational
  questions.
• What would you do in this situation?
• Probe for specific, detailed answers.
• Avoid the tendency to clone yourself.
• Keep an open mind.

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More interviewing strategies

• Determine your management style
• Determine how candidate wants, likes, and needs
  to be managed
• Ask about situations where they performed best
  and motivated to excel
• Find out how they learned new skills
• Ask about how they planned and executed their
  assigned tasks
• Get examples of how they performed under
  different managers

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More Interviewing strategies

• Hire on fact not feel
• Trust your intuition at the end of the interview.
• Your intuition takes about 10 years to get good.
• Blink by Gladwell (intuition).
• Sway by Brafman and Brafman (psychological
  influences).
• The Drunkards Walk Mlodinow (randomness of
  success)

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• Find out why applicants want to do, not have, the
  job
• (do they know what the job entails).

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After the interview

• Meet with interview panel. Go over the pros and
  cons of the candidate in question.
• Ensure the democracy of the exercise by allowing
  each panelist to have his or her say.
• Form your own opinion, but be prepared to back it
  up. I just didnt like the guy is not going to
  cut it.
• Have the manager weigh in last. Although
  everyones opinion should have bearing on the
  final decision, ensure that it is clear who will
  have authority to veto a hiring decision.
• A manager who hires someone against the stated
  wishes of his or her team risks causing friction
  among the group and threatening the democratic
  nature of the panel hiring process.