Recruiting

Team Interviews for the Win: How to Make Them Really Work

In yesterday’s Advisor, we discussed the pros and cons of team interviewing. Today we’ll discuss how to diminish those cons so you can use team interviewing to its maximum potential.

As we discussed yesterday, one of the common problems with team interviewing is disagreement among team members concerning the candidate. Choosing how you will decide on a candidate before the interview helps to avoid this problem. And, you have a few choices.

Requiring a consensus in order to hire a candidate can help appease all members of a team, but it can also slow down the process in the event of a disagreement. Alternatively, majority vote pleases most of the people most of the time, but narrow victories can leave just less than half your team unsatisfied.


Want to maximize your interviewing strategies? Start on Thursday, August 27, 2015, with a new interactive webinar, Team Interviews: How to Orchestrate Effective Dialogue between Current Employees and New Candidates for Optimal Hiring Results. Learn More.


A second alternative, ranking, sometimes makes the most sense. In this system, each candidate is ranked by each team member, and the candidate with the highest ranking wins. This method allows each team member to grade their decision from highest to lowest and helps the team have a runner up on hand should the primary candidate not pan out.

A Little Training and Coordination Makes Team Interviews a Powerful Tool

As we have seen, team interviews can provide some really great bonuses to your hiring efforts, but there are some pitfalls, too. Train your employees to capitalize on those bonuses while avoiding the pitfalls, and your team interviews will really take off.

Take some time before the interview to plan it out, it can go a long way. Here are some basic tips for better coordinating your team interviews:

  • Make use of every team member’s unique strengths. Make sure that every team member has a unique reason for being at the interview. Plan out what each person will cover in the interview ahead of time. It’s best if their strengths don’t overlap too much.
  • Consider the whole. The unique strengths that each team member brings to the table should add up to something that best represents the company. Consider each member to be a facet of the whole gem; that gem is your company’s message. It can be bad for everyone if team members contradict the brand and vision of the company. 
  • Give everyone time to speak. People need to be able to express what they bring to the interview. Coordinating a strategy that includes every member of the team is the easiest way to ensure you are making the best use of everyone’s time.

It can be tough getting into the swing of things when you are not used to conducting team interviews. A little patience, some planning, and a bit of practice can really help when it comes to selecting the right candidate for the job.

Teams are also a great way to conduct an interview, and team interviews are a great way to save time and avoid hiring goofs.  How to get there? Fortunately there’s timely help in the form of BLR’s new webinar—Team Interviews: How to Orchestrate Effective Dialogue between Current Employees and New Candidates for Optimal Hiring Results. In just 90 minutes, on Thursday, August 27, you’ll learn everything you need to know about using a team to make the most of an interview.

The fact of the matter is, many of your potential candidates’ day to day experiences revolve around social media, but using social networks as a recruiting channel is new to many organizations—which means they need to adapt and use new tools in order to effectively deliver content, job postings, and branding material. But it’s worth it—posting job openings on social media can increase candidate applications by 30% to 50%! And with a little strategizing, it’s easy to take advantage of. Want to learn more? Start with the free white paper from iCIMS®, Scaling Up Social Recruiting: Three Steps to Successful Social Media Recruitment.

Register today for this interactive webinar.


Use team interviews to make the most of an interview. Join us Thursday, August 27, 2015, for a new interactive webinar, Team Interviews: How to Orchestrate Effective Dialogue between Current Employees and New Candidates for Optimal Hiring Results. Earn 1 hour in HRCI Recertification Credit and 1 hour in SHRM Professional Development Credit. Register Now.


By participating in this interactive webinar, you’ll learn:

  • How to determine who should be involved in the team interview—depending on the position you’re looking to fill
  • The importance of presenting a unified vision of the company culture for the potential employee
  • Key questions to ask as you launch your team interview process, such as:
    • What’s the right size for a team interview?
    • How can you get everyone to agree about what they’re looking for in a good candidate?
    • How do you handle over-powering employees that monopolize the interview?
    • What are the drawbacks of using your team in the interview process?
  • How to prepare and initiate a discussion that will demonstrate the interviewee’s strengths and ability to work with a group
  • The importance of having everyone on your team focused and present—no texting or looking at their laptops while the interview is ongoing
  • Getting feedback from the team—everyone has a say!
  • How to put it all together and assess the results of your interview, so you can feel confident in your decision to hire, or not to hire
  • And much more!

Register now for this event risk-free.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Eastern)

1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Central)

12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Mountain
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Pacific)

Approved for Recertification Credit and Professional Development Credit

This program has been approved for 1 credit hour toward recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI) and 1 credit hour towards SHRM-CPSM or SHRM-SCPSM.

Join us on Thursday, August 27, 2015—you’ll get the in-depth Team Interviews: How to Orchestrate Effective Dialogue between Current Employees and New Candidates for Optimal Hiring Results webinar AND you’ll get all of your particular questions answered by our experts.

Find out more

Train Your Entire Staff

As with all BLR®/HR Hero® webinars:

  • Train all the staff you can fit around a conference phone.
  • Get your (and their) specific phoned-in or e-mailed questions answered in Q&A sessions that follow the presentation.

Find out more

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