Multiple Interviewers – Good or Bad?
Multiple Interviewers – Are they deep enough?
Multiple interviewers takes significant resources, but has certain advantages. Let’s think about this more.
In my 25 years quest for premium recruiting, I have tried many ways. In 2005, I used multiple interviewers and got some benefits. As the leader of a 10 office financial organization, I was the first one to interview and killed most applicants. One very energetic female applicant for branch manager successfully got my go ahead f0r second round with my regional manager in another city.
She sensed my enthusiasm for this candidate, and said, “You can hire this person, Jim, but I never want to work with her.”
This got me to thinking and looking at my notes. I agreed with my manager that what I saw as only risk was likely certain trouble in how the candidate dealt badly with coworkers.
You might also see in this example how the candidate may treat one interviewer well and another poorly.
This multiple interviewers method saved me on that hire but not an all. As I deepened my thinking, I saw that background check was irreplaceable and multiple interviewers had a couple of weaknesses.
Multiple Interviewers Has Value But We Found More as We Went Deeper
We found that multiple interviewers tended to be not deep enough. Two fairly shallow interviews was not as good as one deep. With shared ownership, no one’s ownership was deep enough.
We found that having one well trained recruiter handle all interactions including the interview was valuable in tandem with our very insightful background check.
All interactions includes first contact, follow up messaging, scheduling interviews, 60-120 minute interviews and deep background check arrangements. Different connection points gives the recruiter a bigger picture to understand the candidate. The totality of the interactions and data obtained create the best possible picture of the overall candidate. Also. one recruiter is responsible for having the deepest understanding of the hiring managers needs. Complete ownership of the process by one leads to the most spot on placements reachable.
This one recruiter must be wholly committed to the quality process. He or she must not be susceptible to be bought off. None of these can be assumed. Our ability to do this puts us miles ahead of others.
Having seen what we know, we would never turn back. That we give one great interview and hand off to our clients.
This does allow for multiple interviewers with the hiring manager being the second. We love when we can add hiring manager insights to our own as a further check we feel the system is complete. We seek true partners in the quest for great hires again and again. Multiple interviewers – Good but not good enough for SHI Group.