November 21, 2014: It's Time to Make a Decision

This is part 7 of a 7-part series on the hiring process.

Who screens the resumes?  Who sets up the conference room?  Who calls the candidates to arrange for interview times?  How long is the interview?  What questions will each person ask?  Will there be a skills test?  Who is in the conference room?  Is everyone in the room a decision-maker, or does 1 person get to make the call?  If it's a cross-departmental team, can a person not in the relevant department have a real impact on the decision?

A million questions, each with its own answer.  Many companies assign HR to be directly in the selection process, either as recruiters looking for candidates, or screening candidates.  HR may make or find a vendor to provide a recruiting training.  Most companies will have a single person screen candidates.  The final interview will most likely be a panel interview.

The best panel interviews have the following qualities:
1) All of the interviewers want to be there
2) All of the interviewers either have a lot of experience interviewing together or they have discussed roles and expectations before the interview starts
3) The decision-makers know in advance who they are
4) ANY decision-maker can veto a candidate for any legal reason
5) The panel has agreed on a set of questions to ask
6) The panel has a high degree of trust in each other

When a candidate leaves the room, the hiring manager (who may be the direct supervisor of the candidate or the supervisors boss) owns the conversation.  She will first do a quick survey.  Usually the panel will know just by body language about an obvious dud.  For the candidates that bear consideration, the hiring manager first has to assess the team's opinion on this central question: can the candidate do the job?

If the answer is yes, then the only question left is, "Is this the person we want to do this job?"  #4 above is the key to making this a useful discussion.  As we discussed in the first post in this series, the decision to hire someone is a momentous decision for a company.  Even if you do it 10 times a year, each one has large fiscal and performance impacts on your organization.

That you have a panel is the most important thing.  The second most important thing is #4 above: the veto power.  Maybe that one person picked up on something that no one else did.  Maybe that one person is wrong.  But what if he's right?

In a panel interview several years ago, we interviewed someone we had known for years.  We knew for a fact he could do the job.  At a previous company, he had reported to a member of the interview panel.  He presented himself well in the interview.  He was obviously capable.  There were questions about his personal behavior and interpersonal relations that stemmed from a few of our previous experiences with the individual at his previous company.  But if we had not known him from then, he would have been a solid candidate.

I was not in favor and said so.  Another manager said the same thing.  But we both also said to the other individual in the room, "If you want him anyway, go ahead."  We hired the guy.  In 6 months, we had fired the guy.  All of our predictions about how it would roll out came true.  In other cases, we have had a single individual veto a candidate.  The person just said, "I didn't like how he said..." and that was it.  We moved on to the next candidate.

Is this fair to the candidates?  Maybe not.  But that's not the hiring manager's responsibility.  The hiring manager is responsible to get the best person for the company, period.  The company provides parameters, the manager finds the best person she can to fit those parameters.  Once someone is trusted enough to be on an interview panel, she is trusted enough to wield a veto.

The best panels are also decisive. If the screening process is done well, there will be 5 or so final candidates to interview.  In the best situations, the panel will tell the hiring manager, "We like these 2-3 candidates.  Your choice for which one you pick."  The panel is then done, the hiring moves forward.

During the process, a good manager will take notes.  Why did I choose this person to interview and not this one?  Why did I choose to hire this person and not this one?  What did I notice during this interview?  Once you hire someone, watch her performance.  Should the interview have given you clues?  When you make a bad hiring decision, and we all do, good notes from the hiring process will help you to not repeat the same mistake.