Two Powerful Techniques

Interviewing is a massive pain point for most high-growth companies. “What questions should we be asking? What information should we be seeking in our follow-ups? How do we improve time management, get past the candidate’s ‘spin’, interpret the data we’ve gathered, etc.?”

Interview training is our sweet spot at Talgo, and we would (of course) be delighted to train you and your team. There is a technique that we encourage all of our clients to use in conjunction with formal training—and there’s no fee for it!

Shadowing

Who is the most capable interviewer in your company—the one who consistently captures amazing information, while getting rave reviews on candidate experience? Ask them if you can tag along in a couple of interviews, and offer to take notes for them. Be sure they let their candidate know to expect you as a guest in the interview, and that you are there only to observe—i.e., it’s not a panel interview!

During the interview, pay attention to your colleague’s voice, their body language, and the content of their questions. While capturing the candidate’s responses, take some “side notes” on anything you observe from your colleague that you want to understand better. When the interview is over, engage in a ~15 min debrief with your colleague, focusing on what you observed and what questions you have about their execution. Of course, use the opportunity to discuss what you learned about the candidate for a shared “calibration” experience.

There’s an equally powerful, equally cost-effective complement:

Reverse Shadowing

This is a similar process, but in reverse. Ask your highly-skilled colleague to observe you in a live interview or two, and (again) set expectations in advance with the candidate. Your colleague can focus on taking notes on your behalf, and also taking notes on what they observe from you. You are free to put your full energies into generating a rich dialogue with the candidate.

After the interview, you and your colleague should conduct a longer debrief—ideally 30 mins. Start by having your colleague give you feedback on your execution—what worked and what didn’t, with specific examples. Ask them to rate various aspects of your execution on a 1-10 scale if there’s any doubt (note: we have checklists!) Then, discuss what you learned about the candidate in some detail, collaborating on a data-driven rating for the elements you were evaluating.

Get Disciplined!

We have helped many companies roll out formal shadowing/reverse-shadowing programs—e.g., new interviewers must shadow X interviews by highly-skilled interviewers and be shadowed in X more. These clients can ramp-up new interviewers with amazing speed and quality, and the highly skilled “coaches” keep getting better and better. As you might expect, these companies make very few hiring mistakes!