Hiring Process: Should Your Employees Be Interviewing?

When you’re preparing to add a new member to your team, and you’re in the driver’s seat, a buttoned-up interview process is one key to avoiding a costly hiring mistake.  Also important is how you prepare and engage your own employees in the process.  Unless you’ve worked for a large company with a well-established and well-oiled HR team, it is unlikely that you’ve ever received any formal training on how to interview.  Your employees probably haven’t either.  In this post, I’d like to challenge you to consider how you can best position your own employees to be an effective interview team before you make your next hire.

Define the Interview Team

Let’s take a step back.  You identified the need for your team.  You created a job description.  You may have even met with your HR rep or a recruiter.  What’s next?  Select the interview team.  It’s important to establish the interview process and who you’d like to meet at an early stage.  It’ll also help avoid the “Oops-we-forgot-so-and-so, and I promise this is REALLY the last interview!” routine.

Don’t be afraid to be selective.  Meeting with your entire team so that no one feels left out of the process will not always offer the best evaluation or contribute to a positive candidate experience.  The candidate should be assessed by people within your organization that really “get it”.  That means they have a solid understanding of what abilities and experience is actually necessary to be successful in this role AND at your company.  With that said, you should also recognize that the people who really “get it” may not necessarily be the most senior or experienced people in your organization.  Pick people who understand your company’s culture and can easily assess if the candidate would fit well with your team dynamic.

Of equal importance, be sure to inform the “chosen” ones that they have been selected.  Tell them how they can truly add value to the process.  This is essential to engaging the employee in the process. It will ultimately impact their assessment and your hiring decision.

I recently worked with a small team that seemed to be highly communicative and collaborative.  They were in the process of hiring an entry-level analyst, and as the recruiter I facilitated the candidate’s interviews.  After the first candidate left the office, one of the interviewers casually said to me, “I didn’t even know what to ask them…I don’t even know what this person is going to be doing!”  I was crushed and horrified! What happened here? How could this employee possibly effectively assess who was right for this position?

The example above may seem extreme, but it is surprisingly quite common.  This can be avoided by implementing a few straightforward actions that will prepare your employees for your next interview process.

• Speak with each member of the interview team before you begin.  At the very least, you should plan to have a conference call to field questions.  Explain why you are hiring for this position and what you are looking for in a strong candidate – experience, skills, etc.
• Develop a series of questions for the interviewers and explain the importance of asking every candidate the same set of questions.  Talk about great answers and not-so-great ones.
• Remind interviewers of questions that you legally cannot ask and the topics they should not discuss.  It may seem obvious but employees can innocently be unaware or may have previously been exposed to poor practices.   Ask your HR Department or Recruiter for some guidance if you’re unsure.
• Create a sense of accountability.  Demonstrating to employees that their opinions are a key factor in the decision making process is a remarkable motivator.  Clarify why you would like the employee involved in the hiring process and how they can add particular value.  How will their role interact with this position?
• Ask for and acknowledge feedback on the candidates (and the process).  Some hiring managers prefer to do this one-on-one, while others like to discuss as a group in a wrap-up session, which can be highly effective when assessing multiple candidates at one time.
• Maintain your role as the hiring manager throughout the process.  If you’ve defined an interview team comprised of opinionated thought leaders, you may need to occasionally remind yourself that you are the one who ultimately makes the hiring decision!
• And finally, inform the interview team who was hired!  This is a final step in successfully engaging your employees throughout the interview process and will pay dividends in future interviews.  It’ll also help create a bit of a “welcoming committee” when the new employee joins.

So, whether you’re about to make the first hiring decision of your career or you’re hiring your 25^th employee, take a step back before you even begin the interview process.  Evaluate your interview teams and the employees you have involved.  You’ll not only improve the candidate experience and avoid a costly hiring mistake, but you’ll be investing in, engaging and further improving your current employees as well.