How Involved Are You In The Interviewing Process
By Nick at 5 February, 2007, 8:05 pm
Do you spend a lot of your recruitment time in the actual interview process itself, or you do more of the sourcing, screening, and background checking side of things? In my past experiences, I have done both and feel that with 1-2 other levels of interviews with hiring managers for candidates to go through, I could easily back away from doing so much in-depth interviewing with each candidate. However, I feel that the interview is the most important part of the employee selection process.
After many years of it, both as a small business owner and as a candidate, I suppose it is possible that I am feeling burn out with the process. I am finding that I am not as eagerly looking forward to stepping away from other projects to meet with candidates the way I used to be. I would still like to keep managers well trained in the interviewing process and provide them with whatever guidance they may need.
For corporate hiring decisions, I am in it from start to finish. From creating and posting the job opportunity to arranging interviews with the candidates to sitting in with the hiring managers to help them make the final decision.
If you are dealing with a large corporation, then hiring at the organization’s lower levels should be done at each individual location. If you are a part of a small, one location business, then help out when needed on such tasks as compensation studies, job postings, etc. I have found the local culture in a large corporation to be better for recruiting and hiring than the corporate level. However, there is always the danger of your individual locations to be detached from corporate. For example, have you ever seen a commercial for Publix Super Markets to see all the employees all happy to help the customers in the stores. Yet when you go to an actual store it can be further from the truth. In some stores, employees are no where to be found, whereas in other stores they live and breath that commercial.
If I would have stayed with Publix, I pass down as much information and training as much as I can to better help the other store managers in their hiring of store level employees. I would like to see them to make good hiring decisions. However, I was never in on the individual hiring decisions unless they ask for help.
In my experience of running a small business, I have been involved throughout the entire process, for both management positions and front line positions. I would do phone interviews for front line positions and then conduct the face-to-face interviews and other employee testing. I would then process offer letters when I was ready to make the final decision. For the management positions I conduct phone interviews, allow some of the employees to sit in on the interviews. I felt that allowing the employees to sit in on the interviews of management candidates was beneficial since they were going to be reporting to that manager. If they felt that they were not going to get along with that particular candidate, I would probably not hire the person.
In the past, I had control over most of the hiring process. I think it’s important for the hiring manager to be involved as they are the ones that make the final decision and the candidate will be working directly for them or in their dept.
If you are confident that the hiring managers are fully trained in the interview process and will not ask any questions or take any action which could be disputed, then I would allow them to conduct the interviews and recommend the hiring.
I have found that the best approach for management candidates are interview panels. Think of it as if you were a master’s student undergoing your theses defense. A representative from the Department and HR are always present. You can also invite other members of the organization to sit in as the audience. This results in an interview process with department specific questions and interactions but also a seasoned HR Pro to help support some of the more delicate questions or situations. Some may say why a panel for entry-level positions? The answer is in turn-over.
Investing the cost of the interview on the front-end would many organizations to choose and keep great employees even in those entry-level positions. It also allieviates that “second interviewâ€. I cannot stand that “second interview.†They have been a complete waste of my time.
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