Determining the Right Hire

Let’s set the scene: you’ve been yearning for the perfect candidate to swoop in to fill an open position (for what seems like ages) when you receive an interview invitation from HR signifying that your dream has come true. After going through the trouble of scheduling, you finally meet the candidate face to face only to realize five minutes in that their skill set and goals do not align with the role. Cue the horrifying music.

Ask a Manager guru, Alison Green, was recently met with the question, “Is there a nice way for an interviewer to short-circuit an interview if the candidate obviously isn’t right?” 198 comments later, it’s pretty evident that this scenario is all too common within the confines of hiring and recruiting.

Green said, “There are candidates who seem great on paper and who do pretty well when you talk through the basics on the phone, but when you bring them in, they have an obvious deal-breaker pretty early on. Or, you might work in an organization that strictly dictates what hiring procedures you’re allowed to use and for unknown reasons doesn’t phone-screen candidates first (or that has someone inept selecting candidates to bring in to interview with you). If that’s the case, you should push back on those practices.”

While phone screens are a good way to weed out the wrong candidates, they aren’t always able to detect how a person may actually fit into the company’s culture. This is extremely important to understand early on since the hiring process not only costs the company time, but also costs a large sum of money as well.

Green said, “Sometimes it’s something that didn’t come out in the phone screen and it’s not due to any fault on the part of the interviewer. Some people reveal information about themselves differently in person, or mention something highly relevant that you would have expected to come out on the call.”

Pre-recorded video questions are a unique way to circumvent the above issue. When a recruiter or hiring manager is able to see the candidate’s personality, body language, enthusiasm, and critical thinking skills, he or she will be able to make a more developed decision as to whether or not to invite the candidate for an in-person interview. Rather than spending 30 minutes on a phone screen with one candidate, recruiters can now spend that time reviewing recorded answers of multiple candidates instead.

Using technology is not only a great way to expedite and streamline the hiring process, but also a great way to avoid having to figure out the most polite way to cut a bad interview short.

Image used under Creative Commons License from Victor1558.

Comment by Bill on December 11, 2013 at 9:09am: Keith,

I can appreciate that video interviews might not be for you. Britni and I both work for the same company and we are highly selective about the type of company that we approach because at this point in time there are certain situations where digital interviewing is extremely effective, and others where it isn’t yet a fit. What I can assure you is that our customers have documented significant savings in time, improved hiring quality, reduced turnover, and reduced spend on 3rd parties due to the added bandwidth and improved candidate data acquired from digital interviews.

Video interviews, especially pre-recorded, are used to get better information (We don’t hire resumes) on a candidate earlier in the process so that more potential candidates get a chance to tell their story thus improving the chances that the best candidate gets hired. Recruiters are able to hear from more candidates without having to play the scheduling game, thus allowing them to see more candidates in the middle of their funnel while reducing the amount (not eliminating) of in-person interviews required to make a hire (This is especially when these videos are shared with hiring managers who can assess technical skill through story, instead of what someone chose to write on a resume).

People can also discriminate by looking at someone's photo on Linkedin, looking them up on a social network, looking up their address, reading their last name, etc. We take what we do very seriously and educate our customers so that the tool is not used inappropriately

Comment by Jerry Albright on December 11, 2013 at 10:27am

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on December 11, 2013 at 4:12pm: Thanks, Bill. I hear what you are and Britni are saying. I think that video interviewing has a very valid and useful role and provides prior to F2F) can be and are being managed other ways: e.g., instead of calling up or using a video to ask what someone's availability to interview, their salary expectations, etc: you send them an email or text message.

In summary:

1) VI would be very useful at what you're NOTselling it for: eliminating unnecessary out-of-area F2F interviews and

2) VI isn't all that cost effective or necessary to do what you are selling it for.

(In addition, I'd like to see the independent, unbiased statistics that show VI cuts down turnover and it improves the chances that the best candidate gets hired? How would you measure either of those?)

Finally, you may screen and counsel your customers carefully to caution them against misuse; but unless you and they have tight contracts, I fear someone (your clients, you, or both) may get sued.

Take Care,

Keith