If you knew that every time you stepped up to a steel press there was a real chance you could lose a finger or a hand, wouldn’t you stop and prepare yourself to be super-dee-duper careful?
Interviewing a candidate is no different. The stakes are just less obvious.
What if you weren’t truly getting the most authentic information from a candidate, as free of bias and pleasantries as possible, and you passed on a great fit? Or worse, you endorsed someone because you missed the key indicators that they were simply performing well in an interview? Either way, you’re probably going to cost your company cold hard cash, your colleagues hours of stalled work and frustration, and your team, a person who could have made a real difference. A bad hire can cost as much as 2.5 times that person’s salary. That’s a huge problem.
Here’s the harder truth: conducting an interview takes more self awareness than most people bring to it. You are the vessel through which authentic information could flow about a candidate, or doesn’t. And most interviewers, even well meaning, experienced ones, are not as prepared as they think they are to receive that information clearly every time.
Here’s how you get ready to be super-dee-duper careful.
Debiasing. Know your biases, the ones you’re aware of and prepare for the ones you can’t identify. And don’t infect your teammates. Sharing your opinion about a candidate before your fellow hiring team members have formed their own assessment creates a bias vortex that can quietly pull the whole team in one direction before the process is even finished.
Environmental Designing. Set the stage intentionally. No notifications from laptops, phones, people in the hall. No to-do lists in your line of sight. Set a comfortable, distraction free space for both of you. Have your interview script in front of you. This isn’t casual. Treat it that way.
Centering. Lose the jittery coffee energy. Call yourself fully into the room before the candidate walks in (say it out loud, “I am here for them so they can be here for me”). Take a few deep breaths, a quiet moment of intention, drink a few swallows of water; find what works and do it every time.
Listening. This is a big one and the one most people overestimate their ability to do. Real listening in an interview means radical curiosity with as little in the moment judgment as possible. Your job in that chair is to gather information, not to evaluate it in real time. Save the judgment for after. Simply receive what’s in front of you.
So, are you going to wave this off and keep doing what you’ve always done? Or are you going to step back, take an honest look, and explore where you could show up better?
That 1,000 pound press is slamming down right in front of you. Pay attention.
Your Turn
What are your practices for getting set to get the most out of your candidate interactions?
Which of the four centering practices (debiasing, environmental designing, centering, or listening) is the one you know you need to work on most?
Have you ever walked out of an interview and realized you were barely present for it? What got in the way?
If you have interviewed much, I would be willing to bet you’ve had interviews that feel like a waste of your time. What would you do differently now?
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