Conducting an interview? Three things to keep in mind.

One responsibility that gets added to the duties of many professionals during their careers, is to interview candidates for roles in the organization. Sometimes (especially in the larger companies), there are training and enablement sessions on conducting interviews. However, in many cases, people conducting interviews have to rely on their own talent, experience, and common sense of course.

The primary focus for a job interview invariably is in figuring out whether the candidate skill sets match the description of the job. From a long-term business outcome perspective however, there are three other things to keep in mind as an interviewer, perhaps much more important than the skill set match.

# 1: Candidate Experience

What we take for granted after the event, we may not always be mindful during the event. While conducting an interview, we sometimes forget that the evaluation that is happening is bi-directional. While the interviewer (individual or a panel) is evaluating the candidate, the candidate is evaluating the company, either consciously or sub-consciously.

Candidate Experience is what the candidate feels about the company before, during and after the interview and is important regardless of the outcome of the interview. The interviewer or panel represents the company and is responsible for projecting the right brand image, values, and culture of the company to the candidate. One thing to keep in mind is that ensuring an optimal candidate experience during an interview is not just about being courteous and respectful (which most people are), but much more. As an example, what will be the candidate experience if the company does not have the courtesy to inform the candidate about the outcome of an interview?

Of course, somebody could say, “We are here to run a business. All this ‘feel-good’ stuff may sound nice but has no tangible business impact.” The reality on the ground however is quite different. The experience could be the deciding factor for a candidate taking up an offer versus an alternate one, with other hygiene factors such as role, compensation & benefits, and growth opportunities being equal. The experience could be the reason for a candidate approaching you at a later point in time. A good experience can ensure that the candidate recommends the job to others in his/her network - often, even if there is no offer.

Thought experiment: how many companies will be willing to measure candidate experience as a business metric? Would you, as a business / HR leader, be ready to implement this for your organization? Would you, as an interview panelist, be willing to implement this as a personal yardstick?

# 2: Learning Quotient

The ability to learn is much more important than knowledge at the present moment. Unfortunately, most interview approaches are focused on the latter rather than the former. Attempting to map the candidate skills with the job description, invariably results in an evaluation of the knowledge and experience of the candidate. A year down the line however, what if that knowledge and experience is no longer relevant?

Learning Quotient, or the ability to learn, may be considered to be a subset of the Intelligence Quotient (IQ). In today’s world however, I believe it is important enough to be looked at as a separate metric on its own. Evaluating the learning quotient would involve probing the candidate for traits such as curiosity, thought process, opinions, insights, and hunger to keep improving.

As the body of knowledge in any industry sector rapidly expands and changes, up-skilling and re-skilling of the workforce become critical success (or failure) factors. In such scenarios, the business impact of a workforce with a high learning quotient cannot be underestimated.

# 3: Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Culture Fitment

The point of any interview is to identify people who will be a good long-term fit into the organization. This ultimately comes down to whether the candidate will fit into and thrive in the culture of that organization. The Emotional Quotient (EQ) is often a good indicator of culture fitment. Brilliant candidates who excel in an interview based primarily on skills, sometimes struggle to adapt into a company due to culture problems, and ultimately leave. And there is a fair bit of research which shows the business impact of culture mismatches, especially related to employee disillusionment, disengagement, and attrition.

Many companies do have culture fitment as one of the evaluation metrics. What is not clear is on how much effort is put into this evaluation, and whether interviewers are sufficiently trained / enabled to carry out this evaluation during the interview process, including assessing the candidate’s EQ and overall culture fitment.

What about the business impact of culture fitment? To quote Lou Gerstner from his book Who says elephants can’t dance: “Culture isn’t just a part of the game. Culture is the game. Culture is everything.”

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Thanks for reading. The views expressed are my own. Feedback & comments are welcome.