Interviewing for Evidence

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Style Pass

2024-10-02 10:30:06

One area where companies struggle is recruiting good people. I see enormous variability in quality and style of interviewing. This is something I care about, having spent nearly a decade working with some amazing recruiters at a global technology consultancy, and variously as an employee, contractor and independent consultant in many organisations.

There are many aspects to identifying and hiring great candidates, not least attracting the right people in the first place, and casting your net wide enough and creatively enough that you see beyond the usual suspects. A great piece of advice I received early on is ‘Do not hire yourself!’

Regardless of who ends up in the pipeline, one consistent thread throughout the interviews I have observed or experienced is the lack of consistency.

This is not about the type of interview; it is as true of deep technical interviews or the ones where a candidate might give a presentation, as it is ‘cultural’ or more nebulous ones. I do not want to get into the merits or otherwise of different types of interview, that is a windmill to tilt at another day.