Helping New Interviewers Thrive (Part 1)

You know hiring the right people for your company is crucial. You also understand the central role that interviewing plays to that end. But how do you make high-quality interviewing a sustainable process?

You need a reliable, consistent approach for leveling-up your new interviewers. Here are some tactical things you can do to make sure they keep the talent bar high for your company.

Interview Training

There is no substitute for a dedicated learning experience. Good interview training should ideally be led by professional trainers, or at a minimum, experienced interviewers. The content should include a healthy combination of the didactic (teaching) and the experiential (hands-on practice). We’ve found that the mock interview format—where each trainee acts as interviewer and candidate in pair-up interactions with a colleague—is a fantastic way for new interviewers to give and receive essential feedback.

Unfortunately, some companies—even some clients of ours—might let a few new interviewers “into the wild” before they’ve received training. This often arises when the need for capacity takes an uptick before the next training is scheduled. We’re hopeful that the Learn Talgo e-learning we’ve put out recently will help our customers on this front (reach out to [email protected] if you’re curious to learn more), but whatever system you implement, make sure that new interviewers don’t just have to “wing it” when they first start out.

Shadowing and Reverse Shadowing

Shadowing is where a new interviewer watches a senior (calibrated) interviewer in action. Generally the senior interviewer will introduce the trainee as a note-taker, and the trainee will stick to taking notes and observing the interview silently. It’s important that the shadower not try to engage in the conversation—this can compromise the primary interviewer’s rapport.

After the interview is done, the senior and new interviewer should discuss the interview, creating a safe space for the new interviewer to ask about what they observed, and for the two to discuss the data gathered about the candidate.

After around 3 of these, it’s time for the new interviewer to start getting some reps themselves. You could either do this with a mock candidate (i.e. someone already working in the company) and/or with a real candidate but with the back-stop of a senior interviewer “reverse-shadowing” the interview. This allows the more calibrated interviewer to provide feedback across a range of topics such as rapport, follow-up question selection, time management, etc.

Once the new interviewer has been successfully reverse-shadowed (I’d recommend 3 instances) and demonstrated a high level of interviewing capability, they’re good to go on their own. Jordan’s also written about this before.

A similar process of shadowing should occur in rating the candidates based on the data collected. We’ll talk about that later in this series