The candidate paradigm has shifted.

American corporations are used to interviewing candidates who are actively or semi-actively looking for another position. The organization has an expectation of a candidate coming into its environment, being treated however convenient, and then interviewed by interviewers who are unrehearsed / unprepared and having the expectation “the candidate would be lucky to have a position with our company”.

While the organizations do know the definition of a passive candidate, they have not yet translated that knowledge into what that means by modifying hiring managers/interviewers expectations and the overall thinking focused on the candidate selection process.

A passive candidate by definition is one who isn’t looking for another position actively, but if made aware of another interesting position, may pursue it. This alone makes a huge difference in the candidate’s attitude. The onus is on the interviewer and the company to acquire the information necessary from the candidate and provide them the data necessary to create the interest.

What is the major process modification necessary to attract the passive candidate? The organization and position must be “sold” to the candidate.  Passive candidates have jobs – potentially nice jobs they might not be interested in leaving for uncertain opportunities presenting risk.

How to get started

Within the interview process exists absolutes:

1)     Most want to see their potential, future work environment, and not be locked in a conference room for a marathon 3-4 interview process.  The candidate should see the environment no matter where the interview is conducted.

2)     Candidates need to be given breaks between interviews, offered water, food (lunch if appropriate).

3)     Candidates going through interviews need to be shown they are valued and will be appreciated. The same courtesies need to be paid as if they were a customer. No candidates should ever have bad things to say about a company after they have interviewed.

4)     Every candidate needs to receive the full attention of the interviewer (i.e. no cell phones, computers, pagers, etc.) and receive company recruiting and branding marketing materials.

5)     Do not make the assumption that candidates come prepared. They are as much interested in what the interviewer can do to impress them, information they can gain to determine interest vs. what they can do to impress the interviewing team.  Coming prepared for the interview and interviewing well doesn’t do one thing to validate outstanding past performance, depth of experience, or success related motivation. Keep in mind, the candidates are the ones being recruited and pursued.

During the first or second interview, someone’s role will be to gather candidate information.  This may be the hiring manager, a recruiter (either external or internal), or an HR person involved in the selection process.

The information gathered will provide all interviewers with solid information to build a solid understanding of:

• Candidate’s reasons for looking outside their current employer?
• Negatives or concerns the candidate might have about the potential employer and/or job?
•  Candidate’s desired characteristics of a future role and company?
• Candidate’s general and/or personal interests?

How to conduct the interview

This interview should be the last one and conducted as a separate, distinct part of the selection-process (perhaps lunch or dinner?) by a well-versed subject matter company expert. This person needs to be knowledgeable about the role, company, and candidate information. And, given that, be able to:

• Subtly sell the company, the job, the brand, and the culture.
• Have prepared topics that can be shared and discussed.
• Address important issues around candidate information aligned with the information given by the candidate.
• Strike a 50/50+ balance in the conversation. In any conversation, the one that talks the most feels better about the exchange.
• Answer any questions or concerns the candidate may have before offer. This is not an evaluation meeting, one purely for the candidate. Don’t have this meeting if there is no intention to make an offer.

At Honer & Associates, we have over 30 years’ experience in effectively managing the interview process.  If you have any additional questions about interviewing proven IT professionals, please contact us at your convenience.

To effectively hire high-caliber, passive IT candidates, the organizations first priority must be to structure, plan, and execute an efficient interview process.

Ad hoc interviews lacking a planned approach generally take their own course and are simply not efficient.  This applies to both time and results.

Subjectivity

The interviewer’s purpose in conducting the interview is to ask pointed questions and gather candidate data that can be utilized to determine if track record, depth of experience, competency and motivation exist and at what level. When the correct questions aren’t asked during the interview, and the correct mindset doesn’t exist, the interviewer forms opinions to support their first impression of the candidate, not key performance indicator data.  Instead of gathering information to validate a candidate’s caliber and performance, the decision turns into one of “I liked him” or I didn’t like her”.

Making accurate performance-based hiring decisions is dictated by objective decision making, not subjective beliefs. By suspending first impressions and focusing on gathering data (predetermined to be important based on the requirement) makes the process objective with supporting data.

Developing broad-based (or initial) questions, scrutinized by the hiring manager to make sure they address the role prior to the interview discussing the candidate’s knowledge, ensures the interviewer takes the correct path in the interview itself.

Training

These questions need to revolve around extracting data dealing with the candidate’s past performance, depth of experience, position related competencies, motivation, and successful track record.  Interviewers need to know how to listen and then quickly formulate appropriate follow-up questions designed to gather pertinent detailed information they want to learn. The organization needs to choose the interviewers intentionally and train the most gifted to effectively “peel the onion”.

Interviewing

Planned and prioritized questions need to be developed during stages of the interview – particularly during the screening and the performance phases of the interview, allowing the interviewing team to acquire data deemed important and necessary.

• Screening interview – This portion of the interview is used to validate that the candidate has the essential competencies, experience required, and most importantly rank past performance/caliber.  This interview is highly structured with broader-based questions (and their answers) planned in advance, making the candidates simple to calibrate and compare. Bottom line – no one moves on unless they have all the above:  essential competencies, experience required, and are top-performing/high-caliber candidates.
• Performance part of the interview – This is the portion of the interview used to identify the different pieces of the job and then identify the different competencies that align with those different pieces. Predetermined, broader-based questions are based on this. The appropriate people – those who know and understand the job – need to be involved in crafting appropriate questions and answers to determine “match” and performance criteria.
• Candidate-driven part of the interview – This is the portion of the interview where the candidate (especially a passive candidate) needs to be “sold” on the organization, culture, and employer brand.  It is difficult to know what is important to and motivates a candidate.  The interviewer needs to be prepared to sell, subtly, not desperately – especially to the passive candidates – and this meeting can be made more efficient by having someone handle it who is knowledgeable about the company, it’s brand, and the pro’s and con’s the culture generates.

The best interviewers of top IT talent are experts in both science – with their ability to plan and execute – and art – with their ability to extract data based on follow-up questions.  Both combine to make an efficient and effective interview process.

At Honer & Associates, we have over 30 years’ experience in effectively managing the interview process.  If you have any additional questions about interviewing proven IT professionals, please contact us at your convenience.

Graph Image Credit: Lou Adler

The chart above highlights the reason that most companies do not hire above average to top performing talent consistently! The bottom line is easily explained by this graphic. Companies mistake data supported performance for strong/good interviewing skills/behavior. In reality, the two are not related.

Categories Leads to Inconsistent Hiring

Almost every employer will hire the candidate in the top right quadrant. Companies hire candidates in the top 2 quadrants on a consistent basis and this is the major reason hiring is inconsistent.  Many hiring managers subconsciously make the assumption that if a candidate is a good interviewer, then they will be a good performer. Being a good interviewer has nothing to do with performance and is a dated belief from sometime long ago in Corporate America’s legacy.

A paradigm shift has to happen.  Hiring managers need to be able to

• Segregate the poor performer who is a good interviewer from the good performer who is a good interviewer.
• Recognize the poor interviewer who is a top performer.

Training is the Cure for Inconsistent Hiring

The only way to do either of these is by gathering “proven performance” data during the interview, and to do this, the staff doing the interviewing need to become better interviewers. In today’s marketplace,with a scarcity of readily available talent,  the onus is on the interviewers to extract the data from the candidate, and be able to decipher that data – not based on the person’s interviewing skills, but on the proof of performance data acquired during the interview. An opinion based on first impression can never be consistent, especially when compared to one supported by personally acquired data.

Asking general or specific questions about what one or many skills a candidate has will not help gauge a candidate’s track record of success, depth of experience, competencies related to the job, etc. This simply highlights a candidate’s storytelling abilities, speaks to skills they have, but doesn’t even touch on past performcnace.

Everything comes down to training – behavorial interviewing for one. Also, how to assess a candidate’s track record, depth of experience and caliber. Suspending first impressions, knowing what questions to ask, taking pertinent factual interviewing notes, and learning to drill down to the next level to gain candidate insight.

Developing the interviewing abilities of the talent selection team provides the difference between hiring a top or a mediocre peformer consistently (regardless of their interviewing skills).

Peeling the Onion

The key to effective interviewing is knowing how to peel the onion.  The goal is not to find the candidate with the best interviewing skills…it is to find the best performers. At Honer & Associates, we know how to peel the onion.  We have specialized in talent acquisition for over 30 years, having interviewed more than 10,000 candidates and filled over 1,000 IT positions.  To discuss this topic or others, please contact us at your convenience.