Getting the Right Number of Interviewers

A common question for recruiters and HR leaders who are designing an efficient and effective hiring process involves the slate of potential interviewers. For any given open job, the largest chunks of time involved in filling the opening come from 3 sources: Obtaining an approved requisition, Posting the Job, Interviewing and Offer letters. Usually, the Interviewing phase is the single longest chunk of time (thank you Executive calendars!) so when pressure comes to reduce Time to Fill, it can be a target.

In 2011, Fernandez-Araoz, Groysberg and Nohria reported in HBR on the results of their interviews about hiring practices with HR managers at 50 global companies and a group of executive search firms. They found that common practices were much less common and more variable than expected, even within the same companies.  In 12% of companies, candidates for senior positions went through 21 or more interviews before a hiring decision!

It appears that there is a need for some guidance. This article will focus on the question of how many interviewers is enough for a given position. Some considerations when designing a process or building the interview slate:

1.      How senior is the role? Executive jobs that impact many areas will necessarily have more stakeholders who will want to sign off, and the scope of the role can justify more care and time to be taken in the hiring process. In addition, a broad role may involve multiple skill sets and experiences that need to be assessed by different people (not everyone is qualified to evaluate a candidate on ALL of their job related competencies). Some companies include a “culture fit” person in the interviewing slate and their only responsibility is to ensure that the person will not clash with the highly valued company norms.

2.      How fast must the hire happen? In some cases, there may be a high cost for every day of delay (e.g., fines from customer, risk of contractual breach, expensive contractor fees, risk of further turnover from strained internal resources covering the work, etc.)

3.      What is the cultural context? Some companies are comfortable with a lower level of formality in selection and often move casually. Fernandez reports finding that 50% of hires are done on the gut instinct of the hiring manager.  Other companies are culturally systematic or have very high quality standards, and this influences the rigor of the hiring process.

4.      What is the level of capability of the organization with regard to human capital? If the company is comprised of highly trained managers and has advanced analytic tools for hiring (and a track record of using these successfully), they are much more likely to use structured interviewing and other selection processes that take more time. You also need fewer of them to “check” on the others if they are skilled and objective talent evaluators. If they have never used an ATS, you will need to approach the entire process differently.

ASSUMPTIONS

Purpose - Most companies use multiple interviewers for several purposes (e.g., ownership, reduce uncertainty, spread risk, collect more information, etc.). There may be a risk aversion or lack of confidence in hiring so they round up so that everyone has some ownership of a potentially bad decision. From a practical basis you may need several different people so that you can accurately assess all the vital skill sets required for success on the job. However, you don’t necessarily need multiple people to assess each competency. Fific and Gigerenzer (2014) and Reinhard et al (2013) showed that expertise overlap affected the needed number of interviewers.

Applicant Reactions – Interviewing is a much a recruiting event as an evaluation, so you want at least one person on the slate who will give a fair but appealing impression of your company to the candidate. After all, they may be a future customer at some point and any top talent person you can attract is one less working for the competition. Top talent often has choices and they know it – you can count on the fact that other organizations are recruiting them aggressively so don’t forget this piece if you expect to compete for in-demand talent or hard-to-fill openings. See Wilhelmy et al (2016) in JAP for more on signals interviewers use to create a good impression. From the candidate standpoint, they benefit from exposure to more than 1 or 2 leaders if they are to gauge the fit with the organization but you don’t want them saying “What do they still need to know about me?”. Use feedback from Glassdoor ratings and reviews as well as acceptance rates to track how you are doing on this front.

Good Design - It is assumed that you follow good Arvey, Harris and Campion-style structured interview processes based on trained interviewers, solid scoring criteria, and job-related behavioral questions to which you are diligently recording the answers.

Based on the considerations above you will want to vary your number of interviewers around some basic guidelines but always keep it to the minimum necessary number.

GUIDELINES

·        For hourly positions, 2 interviews are sufficient. These jobs are usually higher turnover so you just want a second set of eyes to reduce potential bias from the first interviewer and confirm/validate. Interviewer should include the hiring manager and a future peer to the candidate or peer to the hiring manager if available.

·        For most exempt/management jobs I recommend 4 interviewers on the slate. They should include: hiring manager, matrix manager (depending on the org structure), senior peers, and internal customers. Flex this up if you have multiple stakeholders who will be affected by the role, or it is highly visible/controversial. Flex this down to 3 if the people involved are geographically dispersed or rarely available and it would unacceptably affect time to fill

·        For executive jobs (C-suite and their direct reports), target an average of 7 interviewers per hire. In addition to the Hiring Manager and multiple peers of the candidate you should have C-level leaders from key relationship functions interview as well (internal customers), the CEO, and possibly Board members if the new hire will interact with them. Always include a senior operations or line manager with a P&L so they can “own” the hire if it is a functional or staff area. If you are doing an assessment center or in-depth testing, it is prudent to stretch this out a bit so you don’t have fatigue affecting results or annoying the candidate. Carefully select your interview slate to fit the level and complexity of the role, sequencing it so that the most senior interviewer is last to protect their time.

I prefer to have a standard process with some flex, so that it doesn’t break when faced with the inevitable exceptions. Make sure each interviewer on the slate knows the role, the candidate, the schedule, what they are looking to assess and they can accurately assess it. If you can pull this off while ensuring that the minimum time and stress is put on both the organization and the candidate then you are well on your way.