When it comes to recruitment you are probably making these two mistakes

Rather than beating around the bush (so to speak), let’s get straight to it. You’re just not being effective when it comes to recruiting personnel… 

Mistake number one: Inadequate interviewer prep

In an era of social media, candidate feedback has made it painfully obvious that most companies don’t spend enough time prepping interviewers to do their jobs well. When a candidate comes for an interview, they often spend their time in back-to-back sessions with prospective colleagues who have neither had the time to digest their resume, nor put sufficient thought into the questions they should be asking. The result: a dreadful candidate experience which can end up being exposed on social platforms; potentially creating a negative impression with future candidates. For heads of recruiting and employer branding, this makes it more imperative that interviewers understand how to effectively evaluate candidates, and increases the attractiveness of techniques like behavioural interviewing.

Mistake number two: Unconscious bias and discrimination

The rise of diversity and inclusion is a hot topic in talent. With it has come a backlash against ‘culture fit’-type interviews, which can be a dangerous breeding ground for unconscious bias and discrimination. Whether or not an interviewer would enjoy grabbing a beer with a candidate should not be the key screening criterion. By instead giving interviewers the tools to focus on what matters - an individual’s suitability for the role, as demonstrated by their past behaviour and experience - companies can help nip bias in the bud and increase the chances of qualified candidates getting the appropriate level of consideration, regardless of their background.

The solution?

Behavioural interviewing actually works. Research shows that behavioural interviewing can be 55 percent predictive of future on-the-job behaviour, while traditional interviewing is only 10 percent predictive. When your candidate describes a particular project or experience in detail, you have the opportunity to ask probing questions such as “What were you thinking when you did that?” or “Why do you think you were successful?”. Behavioural interviewing, a far cry from the questions “Tell me about yourself” and “Are you good at X?”, is the time to ask for specific examples and explanations.

Indeed, behavioural interviews can be used to assess a wide variety of competencies, such as coachability, adaptability, and willingness to collaborate. Not to be confused with a skills fit interview in which you may ask candidates to grapple with a new problem, the behavioural interview is a close look at their problem-solving process. More than simply seeing whether or not they can debug a line of code, for example, you want to assess how they debug the code.

 This is a precis from the research article ‘Behavioral interviewing essentials (and why you should care)’ which you can read in its entirety, which includes the questions you should be asking in interviews, until the end of April. The article is from the journal Strategic HR Review, published by Emerald Publishing.