How to Structure Your Interview Process to Maximize the Chances You'll Make the Right Hire
Making a new hire requires a lot of time and effort—which is no big secret if you’re a recruiter! But it’s not just recruiters dedicating their resources to hiring: Everyone from hiring managers and potential team members to senior leaders and receptionists can be called in to participate in some aspect of the interview process. Yet for an activity that touches so many people, interviewing is not always given the respect it deserves.
Some interviewers treat the entire process with disdain, as a waste of time that could be better spent doing almost anything else. Others might not be so openly against interviewing, but they treat their time with candidates as simply a chance to chat and casually discuss work history or common acquaintances. And yet others walk into the interview room with no game plan whatsoever, figuring that they’ll just wing it or let the candidate guide the conversation.
These approaches to interviewing aren’t just ineffective—they also lead to negative candidate experience, tarnish your employer brand, and decrease your offer acceptance rate.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The key to maximizing your hiring success is to implement a structured interview process. This involves outlining exactly what you’re looking for before you even write the job req and creating a framework for each step of the process so that every person who’s involved knows exactly what the purpose of the session is and which criteria they should be evaluating a candidate against.