Let's Talk About Interviewing
So often we interview candidates to find out how well they interview. What if we interviewed to actually learn?
Let's talk about interviewing....I recently read a post on LinkedIn about the importance of hiring fast and firing faster, because hiring is just guessing.
One of my favorite parts of working for CMax is the dedication to creating a culture of trailblazers. We talk all the time about how we are different, but sometimes we have to step back and really ask ourselves are we just talking about being different or are we actually living that dream? Well recently I feel like we are living it.
We completed an interview with a candidate and didn't ask a single interview question.
We had a resume, we already knew her basic skillsets from a phone screen, and we already knew where she worked. Instead of having her walk through job hops from 5 years ago, and list her biggest weakness we gave her a personal drivers assessment.
We didn’t use an assessment to make a hiring decision.
We didn’t use an assessment to disqualify a candidate from anything. Instead we used an assessment to create quality conversation, and it created better conversation than a typical interview ever could.
Instead of transactional questioning we looked at who she was as a human being.
We dug into this candidates aspirations, fears, strengths, etc. We were able to use that information to proactively discuss with the candidate in this role where she would have an opportunity to be successful right away, areas we could support her development, and how her motivators aligned with our culture and vision as a company.
The best part is all this came about naturally in casual conversation without high pressure gotcha questions that get rehearsed answers.
I believe we learned more about the candidate and she learned more about us than any interview I had ever previously been a part of.
So often we interview candidates to find out how well they interview. What if we interviewed to actually learn? So many hiring managers tell me that they can't really know who they have in a new hire until they actually start working for them. My question back is now why?
Will we learn everything we need to know from a new interview process? Probably not, but it certainly feels to me that we are accepting defeat to a common issue without even looking at solutions.
Have you or your team made a hiring decision that left you scratching your head 30, 60, maybe 90 days later? What has your organization done to help prevent repeating the same mistakes?
