Effectively Assessing Candidates

JOB INTERVIEWS ARE nerve-wracking — not just for candidates, but also for the people conducting the interview. As the interviewer, you’re wondering: Could this be the person we hire? Did we finally find someone with the right skills who will work well with the rest of the team? Can we afford them? If this candidate isn’t right, will we be able to find anyone?

Job Interviews Don’t Have to be Painful for You or the Candidate

The experience of candidates who interview with you can affect your reputation in the community, so you should treat them like guests to your company. Don’t be afraid to push for answers and assess them thoroughly, but treat them with respect and always try to end the interaction on a good note.

It’s natural to be cautious of people overstating their resume and it’s healthy to trust, but verify. Don’t just be skeptical; be curious too. Remember — anyone interviewing for a job is in some kind of transitional season in their life. Either they lost a job, they fear they might, or something is not fulfilling in their current role. If you end up in the interview stage with a candidate who turns out to be unqualified, they likely weren’t intending to trick you. Nine out of 10 times they just applied to a role in good faith and hoped you might find them qualified for it.

You’ll get the most and best information from candidates who feel comfortable. Rapid-fire interrogation tactics, harshly criticizing a candidate’s background or skills, or a lack of social niceties can make a good candidate clam up. Remember, they’re assessing your company too, and if they reject you in their mind before you’ve fully assessed them, you may never find out how good they could have been.

Assessing Skills

Begin each interview with a brief but detailed (2-3 minute) description of the role you are interviewing for: What are the main duties? What are the priorities for who you’ll hire? What will they be doing on a day-to-day basis?

You may think this is redundant since they (hopefully!) read the job description before applying. But it has an important purpose: To establish key topics, set the tone and frame the conversation; you need a certain type of candidate, and the answers they give should relate to these needs.

Formal skills assessments, such as work samples or technical tests, can be a mixed bag but they do have value. Avoid taking up too much of the candidates’ time — ideally, an interview and skill assessment should not take more than 2 hours total. All the information they need to complete an onsite assessment should be available, and you’ll be judging how well they can put it together in a reasonable amount of time. You, the interviewer, should be available for clarifying questions — you want to see if the candidate can build off the info you give, rather than only seeing what they can do without extra info, because they’ll be asking questions on the job.

Longer work trials paid at an hourly rate can be helpful to assess work ethic and team fit, but depend heavily on candidate availability and cannot be unpaid.

Assessing Fit

It’s important to assess how well the candidate will fit in with your current team. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that a candidate needs to be similar to your current employees to fit in. Instead, you should always be looking to balance your team with complementary personalities and bring in new skills and abilities. If you have three detail-oriented workers who can sometimes lose the forest for the trees, maybe it would be helpful to bring in a big-picture thinker. If your current team tends to put their heads down and crank out work without communicating much, maybe someone who has experience wearing multiple hats and moving between departments could enhance their work.

Take good notes during and after the interview so you can drill down into how you feel about the candidate:

• If they initially gave vague answers that you couldn’t understand, did they clarify when prompted?
• Did they stay on topic, providing you clear answers, or did they veer off into entertaining but unrelated anecdotes? Sometimes, social conversation skills can cover up a lack of work-related communication skills.
• Did they seem excited or disappointed when you went into more detail about the day-to-day of the role?
• How did they interact with others through the process — introducing themselves when they came in, on a shop tour, etc.?

Wrapping Up the Process

While you should treat candidates respectfully at every stage of the process, the more time they have invested in your process, the higher the level of care you should take with them.

Always try to end the interview on a good note. While some candidates may ask for feedback on why they weren’t hired, it’s usually not a good idea to provide this — it opens up an opportunity for an unproductive argument, and some candidates react poorly. I recommend just highlighting that there were other candidates whose specific experience was a better match, and reiterate that you appreciate their time. In most cases, you can let them know you’ll keep their resume on file and reach out if another role opens up. This smooths the interaction and leaves everyone feeling respected.

Next month, we’ll discuss important pre-hiring steps to take after selecting the best candidate, but before they begin work at your shop.