Importance of Interview Guides in Recruitment
In today’s competitive market, hiring teams are often looking for ways to improve their recruitment process. If you haven’t already, utilizing an interview guide may be the right decision. If you are unfamiliar with interview guides, think of them as your roadmap for interviews. It is essentially a document that lays out the structure, including the introduction, the questions you’ll ask, the time set aside for candidate’s questions, and how you’ll score their answers.
Setting an interview guide benefits the candidate’s experience, as well as the hiring manager and recruiters involved. Here are 8 top reasons, I believe an interview guide to be beneficial.
- Equal opportunities
Setting consistent questions allows for candidates to have the same opportunity to showcase their skillset and experience. This ensures that the hiring process is fair, and all candidates have an even playing field. - Questions are relevant to the job
By setting questions ahead of time, you can ensure that only questions relevant to the job are being asked. Setting questions also allows recruiters to make sure they will be able to gather all of the relevant information needed to assess the candidate’s suitability for the role. - Scoring candidates become much easier
When you use an interview guide, you will have the opportunity to establish metrics by which you will be scoring candidates. Having a consistent score guide helps make evaluation decisions. - Minimizes biases
Utilizing an interview guide helps to prevent biases by creating a standardized way of evaluating all candidates. - Improved candidate experience
When candidates are interviewed in a structured way, it shows that their time is being valued and that the hiring team is truly interested in learning more about their experience. - It also improves the interviewer’s experience
When the hiring team has questions prepared, it allows them to focus on what is most important – the candidate’s response, rather than worrying about what question they should be asking next. - Legal aspects
Having a structured approach can provide evidence that the team followed a fair, consistent and non-discriminatory process which could be important to defend any potential unfair hiring claims. - Timing
Having an interview guide allows recruiters to properly schedule enough time for interviews. Allowing for sufficient time to review all questions and give the candidate time to ask questions helps ensure that nobody feels rushed in the process or ends up being late to their next meeting.In our fast-paced and competitive recruitment environment, interview guides are extremely important for all parties involved. The time and resources invested in establishing interview guides pays off in a variety of ways. If you are unsure where to start, reach out to Logic Executive Search & Workplace Solutions, our team of professionals can offer support with creating a customized interview guide for your next opening.
Written By: Alex Olivastri
Note: This article is written as an opinion piece from the perspective of a Recruitment Specialist