The Effective Hiring Manager

12Effective Final Interview Process

You’ve avoided hiring initially. You’ve set the bar high. You’ve decided to look for reasons to say no. You’ve established your hiring criteria. You’ve created questions based on those criteria. You’ve screened résumés, perhaps in conjunction with your HR business partner. You’ve screened candidates’ social media. You’ve conducted phone screens based on our guidance. Now it’s time to conduct a full day of onsite interviews with those candidates who remain.

When communicating with your candidate and arranging logistics, tell him exactly what the interviewing day is going to be. There is no value in surprising candidates or making them guess about what’s going to happen.

Our interviewing and hiring data show that maintaining some kind of secrecy about your process does not increase your chances of finding true positives or true negatives. It does, however, decrease your chances of offers being accepted. Candidates often tell us that a company not communicating its process is perceived to be hiding that they have no process. Further, candidates tell us that companies who tell them their process in advance and then follow that process closely are perceived to be more professional, more fair, and more likely to have determined accurately who will be a fit for them and who won’t.

Sharing your final interview process beforehand will increase the chances that you will hire whom you offer, and those whom you decline will consider your declination ...