Lucas Price discusses the common practices that companies use during interviews that often lead to hiring the best interviewers instead of the best employees for the role. He emphasizes the importance of proper planning and provides strategies to make the interviewing process more accurate. Lucas suggests carefully selecting and planning out each question ahead of time, asking a smaller number of questions with potential follow-ups, using work samples for sales roles, incorporating behavioral interview questions for complex jobs, using a consistent scorecard, and conducting debrief meetings to ensure a thorough evaluation of candidates.
Take Aways
Plan each interview question ahead of time and have potential follow-ups ready to go deep into each question.
Use work samples, such as role plays, to assess a candidate's performance on the job.
Behavioral interview questions are particularly effective for complex jobs, as they require candidates to share specific stories about how they've handled similar challenges.
Utilize a consistent scorecard with the most important traits for the job to maintain objectivity and focus on what matters for success.
Conduct debrief meetings to discuss candidates and consider different perspectives, ensuring a well-rounded evaluation.
Typically, the interviewer may go to Google 15 minutes before the interview to find several questions on each topic. Or maybe they'll wait and try to remember some questions they like while they're in the interview. They'll be in the interview, ask the candidate a question, wait for an answer, maybe ask a little bit of follow up, and then they'll move on to the next question.
The candidate only needs to be able to speak about each question for three to five minutes, and they've probably read enough on the internet about these topics to give good answers. Then the interviewer moves on to the next question. The candidate is controlling the interview.
After the interview, the interviewer felt like some of the questions were pretty good and others fell flat. So they go to the next interview and ask the next candidate some questions that are the same.
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interviewing candidates just isn't very accurate. However, there are some things you can do to make interviewing more accurate. First plan out each question ahead of time, carefully select it. And write it in your own voice so you can comfortably ask it to every candidate for the role.
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Candidates who've only read about it on the internet probably can't. Second, use work samples. For sales roles, this tends to be role plays. This gives you a chance to see how someone might perform on the job. Giving the candidate a recording ahead of time of what good looks like. gives them an opportunity to prepare for it and gives you an opportunity to see how the candidate can perform when they've had a chance to prepare.
Third, research shows that for complex jobs, Behavioral interview questions are particularly effective. These are questions that ask the candidate to relay specific stories about how they've handled challenges.
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Fourth, use a consistent scorecard with the most important traits for the job. A well built scorecard grounds the process in objectivity. and helps the interviewer focus on what matters for success in the role instead of over indexing on likability during the interview process. Finally, use a debrief meeting.
The best hiring decisions are human decisions. Don't just hire whoever has the highest score on the scorecard.
Many times I've been in a meeting where we were discussing candidates one by one, and after listening to things that the other interviewers learned, I realized I had a blind spot with a particular candidate and my scores were wrong. Keep an open mind and rely on the evidence.
