The typical interview allows hiring managers to gain a lot of information on applicants and holding a review session after all the interviews are completed is an effective way to process all of that information.

Ideally, multiple people from your company should be included in an interview. These people should come from different backgrounds and different levels within your organization. This allows for a comprehensive impression of each candidate and minimizes any inherent biases that one person might have.

Post-interview reviews should have a bit of structure to them, otherwise you run the risk of having them devolve into small talk and rambling tangents. Consider the following tips on how to conduct a post-interview review.

Go Over Impressions

Allow everyone who attended the interview to share their impressions of each applicant. Interviewers should share what impressed them, any concerns that were raised and thoughts on anything they might have missed.

Through sharing these impressions, all of your interviewers can establish a comprehensive picture of each candidate and clear up misconceptions. Typically, one interviewer catches something everybody else missed.

Encourage Honest Dialogue

If you have both junior and senior people from your organization included in the interview, ask the senior members to hold off on their impressions, so as not to sway interviewers lower down in the organization, who may be content to simply agree. Also, emphasize to the entire group that hiring is too critical a process to not have anything but honest thoughts and impressions.

Use a Formal Scorecard

Ask everyone to rank applicants on a formal interview scorecard and make a recommendation for another interview based on the total score. This process may seem a bit trite, but it has the effect of forcing people to compare and contrast applicants in concrete terms.

Minimize the Effects of Primacy and Recency

Research has shown people tend to have the best memory of what came first and what came last in a series. The result is a tendency to overlook what came in the middle. Be sure to caution interviewers about this “primacy and recency” effect and try to develop ways to guard against it.

Ideally, you want to hire the best candidate, regardless of whether they were interviewed first, fourth or tenth.

Decide Who Will Make the Second Interview Cut

An interview process should include both highly qualified candidates and underqualified candidates who seem to have the intangible soft skills to make up for their lack of qualifications.

The most qualified can often become the first choice, as these are the safest choice and easiest to justify later on, should things not work out. However, applicants shouldn’t be discounted simply because they aren’t the best “on paper.”

Be sure to review the job description when narrowing down your list and consider how each interviewee compares to the top performers already in that position, if possible.

At Action Group Staffing, we simplify the hiring process so our clients can focus on their core business activities. Please contact us today to find out how we can support your hiring process.