Speaker 1: Hello, my name is Christine Conrado Staskiewicz, I'm the president of the Conrado Consulting Group. Today, I'm going to review some things you should consider when you're conducting interviews in a candidate-driven job market. We are in a candidate-driven job market. Even though you've heard in the news about some massive layoffs at some of the larger tech companies in the country, we're still in a candidate-driven job market. There are just not enough candidates to fill the jobs that are available. Now an employer-driven job market is when there are more candidates than there are jobs. And you can take a little bit more time, maybe be a little pickier when you're in an employer-driven market. In a candidate-driven market, the candidates are usually interviewing for multiple opportunities at once, and they may even receive multiple offers. So if your competitors or the candidates are moving more quickly through their interview process, chances are you're going to miss the opportunity to hire some exceptional people. The first question you should ask yourself is, how many interviews do you need to have? In today's job market, time is of the essence. Most opportunities should only require three interviews. There are some exceptions, like for a management-level opportunity, critical hires that have exceptional responsibilities, or an opportunity that is the face of the company, someone who has a lot of interaction with your client base or the public. Due to the high visibility and liability of these types of opportunities, additional interviews or testing may be required. There are some important interview elements that you need to include in your interview process, and even though you're moving quickly through the interview process, you need to make sure that you're not going to leave out any of these important elements. You need to consider how each candidate fulfills the requirements of the opportunity and your succession plan, and you should have a succession plan for every opportunity on your team, because people want to know what comes next, you know, what's their growth plan for this position. Do their work habits and attitudes match with your management style? That's very important. You need to understand what your management style is, and you need to talk with the candidates about their work habits and attitudes to make sure that you guys are going to gel. Does the opportunity, your culture, and environment fit with what the candidate is looking for in their next role? You know, it doesn't matter so much if you think they are, you know, just the best thing since sliced bread, but your opportunity and culture and environment don't match up with what they're looking for. You'd hate to make an offer to somebody and get turned down flat because, you know, it's just not a good fit. Every team has its own personality. You need to get an understanding of how they might fit in your team. You don't want to upset the apple cart. You know, one of the biggest reasons people leave a company is because they have a personality clash with their manager or with another team member. We spend more time with our colleagues than we do with anybody else, so you want to make sure that people are going to be, you know, happy working together. Sometimes you have to think out of the box a little bit. If you are hiring somebody to work on site, you know, other than just, you know, bringing them into your office to meet, you should also maybe take them on a tour of the building. Let them see what the amenities are, you know, take them to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee and maybe have a less formal conversation. If you've got a gym in the building, that's a great amenity to show off. If there's a great place, maybe a patio where people can sit and eat lunch or just take a break. You know, sometimes you need to decompress if you're involved in a high-stress project like an implementation. Now, in the first interview, you need to make a list of questions that you want to ask all of your candidates, and then you need to have a list of questions that you ask each individual candidate based on their skills and experience. And a great way to do that is to ask STAR method interview questions. The STAR method uses situationally-based questions to understand the what, where, when, and how the candidate has acquired and used each of the skills that you require for the opportunity. Asking situationally-based questions will give you a good indication of how a candidate may handle a given situation in the future. You want to understand the candidate's goals and ambitions and explain your company's culture and environment. You need to understand if this is a good fit for them as well, not just if they're a good fit for you. You want to understand the role that each candidate has played on the teams they've worked on in the past. Are they a cheerleader, a negative influence, a firefighter, or someone who sits on the sidelines while they're waiting to receive directions? There are a lot of different kinds of roles that people can play on a team. You need to know, you know, where do they fit best? What role is the best fit for them? And if that role is going to be a good fit for you and your team. Some additional first interview objectives. You want to discuss the responsibilities of the opportunity. Walk them through a typical day. Let them know, you know, what to expect. Ask about their work habits. For example, do they like to work autonomously or do they prefer a more structured and directed environment? If you're a hands-off manager, you've got a team that's been working together great for a long time, they're a well-oiled machine, you know, you're pretty much hands-off. You don't want to bring somebody in who is looking for a lot of direction or is going to come to you to ask your permission before they do everything, every time, you know, that might drive you a little bit crazy. So, you want to make sure you bring people in that match your management style. What kind of interaction do they enjoy with colleagues? You know, some people are more social than others, so what's the social makeup of the team? Think about, you know, if they like to do things together, if they're a very close-knit team and you bring in someone who's new and they're a more solitary person, that doesn't mean they can't work well together, you just need to set proper expectations. In the second interview, you need to bring in the people who more closely meet what you're looking for. You don't need to bring everybody in that interview well, just the people that you feel have the best opportunity to fit well in your team and that your opportunity matches what they're looking for. Now, 80% is a great rule of thumb, but it's not always going to work because in some situations you have a very niche opportunity, there may not be very many candidates out there with 80% of what you're looking for. So, you have to decide what you're willing to forego, you know, what kind of concessions can you make? So, before the second interview, you need to have a conversation with each person who will be involved in the interview process. You want to talk with them about what their role will be in the interview. The interview should be more than just a meet and greet, you want to empower your team in the interview process, which can make them more open-minded and accepting of a new teammate because they've played a role in bringing this person on. Each person involved in the interview should understand why they're included in the interview process. If this is going to be a technical interview and you've invited technical people, then you need to let them know that you expect them to ask some technical questions. You know, maybe you're not technical and you're including them so that they can dig deeper into a candidate's skills and experience. Now, another thing that you might want to know is, you know, more about their customer interaction skills and their critical thinking abilities. So, you need to let somebody on that team know that they're responsible for asking those kinds of questions. So, when the interview is over, they have all the information you need to decide who's going to go on to the third interview. A good way to help your team get the information that you need is to explain to them the STAR method. So, as I mentioned before, the STAR method is a method of interview questions, and you describe to the candidate a situation, and you ask them how they've handled a similar situation in the past and what the outcome was, and ask them, you know, what would they do differently going forward, or ideas about the second interview. You want to explain to each team member that they are not to discuss their interview feedback with anyone other than you. You also need to be sure to schedule time with each of your team members after the interviews with each candidate to discuss their feedback with you, and this should be done immediately after the interview or at least that same day. You know, if you're not able to speak with them immediately, you need to speak with them as quickly as possible, and you need to speak with them individually. You don't want them to discuss their feedback with other team members. You don't want people to influence each other's opinions or, you know, try to change their

Speaker 2: mind or anything like that.

Speaker 1: Create a safe environment for team members to discuss their feedback with you and ask them for their pros and cons for each candidate. Don't discuss your feedback with them or the feedback from other team members. And with the third interview, you'll probably have between one and three candidates. You really shouldn't have more than three, you're just making the decision harder for yourself when it comes time to decide who you want to make an offer to. Now, in some cases, you may only have one candidate because it's a niche opportunity and there just aren't a lot of people out there with that skill set. This interview should be for just the finalist candidates. These are the people that you've narrowed it down to, and you want to meet with them again and you want them to meet with other management level people. So, this is when you need to reconfirm the candidate's skills and experience and what their career plans to make sure that everything matches with what you have to offer them. You want to review a day in the life again as a member of your team in the position. You want to review when they could potentially start and what the onboarding process at your company may be. It's important to set expectations for the onboarding process. You don't want people to give their notice at their current employer until the background check is completed. Now, sometimes things come up that are unexpected and people don't actually start, so you don't want them to be in an awkward position where they have to go back and ask for their old job back or they might be without a job. So, call your HR department, find out what they're comfortable with you sharing with the candidate. In most cases, you know, it's going to be a criminal background check, a reference check. There's a difference between a reference check and an employment check. An employment check is when they call the HR department and just confirm their title and the dates that they work there. A reference check is when you want to speak with someone who they reported to directly who can answer specific questions about the things that they did while they were employed there and what their level experience is and so forth and so on. You need to let them know if there's a health screen. A lot of health providers require a tuberculosis test and they also require that people be up to date on their vaccinations and there's a lot of other things that can be involved in the onboarding process. They can even do an educational background check where instead of just providing a diploma, they want to call the institution where someone received their degree and confirm that they did complete the full program. So, you need to share this information so your candidate doesn't, you know, prematurely give their notice. You want to give them the date that you're going to have a decision. This is very important. You know, in this market, a lot of companies are just not moving as quickly as they need to to be able to secure the candidates that they want and they give a date and then they don't stick to it and you lose candidates that way and you also lose the faith and the trust of the candidates, you know, especially if you don't call them. Even if you have bad news, you know, they may never want to interview with you again because they don't feel like you respect them.

Speaker 2: Things to remember during the interview process.

Speaker 1: Interviews cost time and money. You're taking up people's time, the candidates' time, your team members' time, your time and other managers. People can get burned out on interviewing, you know. If you keep dragging it out and you keep losing candidates, then it's going to take longer for you to hire someone and you're going to have to interview more candidates and that's going to cost you time and money, you know, it could be overtime. More interviews don't necessarily add value, so if you prepare yourself and your team before the interviews and you know exactly what you want to learn from each candidate about their skills and experience and what they're looking for in their next role, then you should be able to complete the interview process in three interviews. The way you treat candidates during the interview process sets expectations and can affect your reputation in the job market. So the way you treat them during the interview process is the way they think you're going to treat them if they come to work with you. So if you don't keep your word or you add in extra interviews, then they're going to think that you're disorganized and that you don't respect other people's time and they may not want to come to work for you. And people do talk, so it could get out into the job market that, you know, your interview process is very disjointed and, you know, people just don't want to deal with that in the job market today. They don't have to deal with it. There are a lot of companies out there that are hiring people that respect their time and get through the interview process in a reasonable time frame. Be honest with yourself and everyone involved in the interview process. So if you don't really know what your management style is, then you may hire people that aren't going to be a good fit for you. So you really need to take a look at yourself and understand what your management style is, and you need to set expectations with everyone in the interview process and stick to those promises. Questions to ask yourself if you think you need to have more than three interviews. Ask yourself, why do you want additional interviews? Did you forget to ask a specific question or line of questions? Are you having trouble making up your mind between candidates? Has something happened to change the job requirements? Is a prior bad experience making you anxious about making a choice now? So you need to ask yourself, you know, did I really prepare myself and my team for these interviews so that we didn't forget questions or a line of questions? Are you having trouble making up your mind because you didn't take good notes? You know, has something changed? You know, have you moved from reporting to the CIO to maybe the CFO? So now there's different responsibilities or they want to get involved in the interview process. You know, if it's a prior bad experience that's making you anxious, have you changed your interview process to make sure you don't make another bad hire? So really take a look at what you've done in the past, what's worked and what hasn't worked. You know, prepare yourself. This is a project just like any other project that you probably face. You have other people working on this project with you, you have expectations of what they're going to contribute, and you need to communicate that with them. And you need to set up a project scope for, you know, maybe there's a better term out there for that, but that's what it makes me think of. So I hope this information helps. And if you have any questions or comments, you can reach me at my email or phone number, which are on the screen now. Thank you very much for your time. Good luck and goodbye.