3 Serious and Avoidable Interviewing Mistakes

A professor type is looking through a magnifying glass at a miniature job candidate

Don’t you wish you could examine each job candidate as carefully as the man above with a magnifying glass? Those of us who are in the business of interviewing skills training understand all too well the importance of attracting and hiring high performing talent. The consequences of bad hires haunt a company and their hiring managers for months afterward. Either the poor hire stays and poisons others on the team or they leave and the vacuum is costly in terms of lost productivity and the time needed to re-fill and train for the open slot. 

Interviewing well is challenging but it is critical. Here are 3 mistakes that you can avoid with just a bit of discipline:

1. Rushing it.
Resist pressure from the anxious hiring manager who is struggling to reach targets and meet deadlines without a key worker or from the CEO who is naturally impatient and doesn’t fully appreciate how long the hiring process can take. If you are ultimately responsible for the hire, you could pay the price for hiring too quickly and making a bad choice. Stick to your guns; do it right; and cite, for those in a hurry, a few instances of poor hires and the misery they caused.

2. Not following a structured interviewing process.
Make sure that everyone on the hiring team takes the time to prepare and knows what they are to look for. For each job, identify the key performance indicators for success. Divvy up behavioral, motivational and intellectual competencies so the individuals on the team know which areas they should focus on. Each should be well schooled in behavioral interviewing so they can dig beneath the surface to better predict actual on-the-job behavior.

3. Letting bias fool you. 
Use an agreed-upon interviewing score card so you have a quantifiable measure of the criteria, either met or not met, that you set out at the beginning. Bias can creep in so easily. It’s just human nature to hire someone just like you or to make a snap judgment that determines your vote. And beyond the human tendency for bias, you need to make sure your interviews are strictly legal. Any hint of unfair hiring practices could put your company at legal risk.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/behavior-based-interviewing-training/


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