Dhruv, the VP of products was reviewing hiring funnel data. One glaring point he noticed was – two of the panelists were saying ‘yes’ to all the candidates they interviewed. This doesn’t make sense.
He started creating a mental model of interview decisions and this is what he got to –
Nailing the right candidate during the interview process is a complex mix of many factors and you (the hiring manager) do not have much control over many of them in the short and even medium-term.
The factors are –
- Your understanding of what you want in the role (must haves, nice to haves, not mandatory & can be learnt skills)
- Your interview panel’s understanding of the same role
- Your biases (e.g. appearance, background, ‘like me’ candidate)
- Interview panel’s biases
- Panel’s interviewing experience / expertise
- Panel’s skin in the game (how much the panelists or their team are affected if a wrong candidate was offered?)
While it is a futile exercise to change all that you can’t control, here are the things that you can influence and make it right –
- Selecting the right panel
- Bringing everyone to the same page on the role requirements
- Learning from disagreements and do better next time
The above three activities are self-reinforcing and makes the quality of your hiring decisions better.
During the initial days of a startup, finding the right panel internally is almost impossible.
Getting friends/past colleagues with product experience to help with interviews is a simple way to solve this.
