Interviewing fatigue is real...

How often are you seeing "We're hiring!" on LinkedIn these days with a call for candidates (my bio tagline for one...). We're in one of the best economies in multiple generations and companies are trying to take advantage of it as much as possible. Make hay while the sun shines as the saying goes...

There are plenty of articles on candidate interview fatigue -- eg. interviewing with a bunch of companies for a similar role and thus answering the same questions a lot, interviewing for a role at a company where the interview panel isn't in sync and thus answering the same questions all day long, having a full day of interviews and being physically and mentally exhausted, etc.

The kind of interviewing fatigue I'm talking about though is from the hiring side -- hiring managers who are trying to grow their teams aggressively may have a dozen or more interviews a week, on top of trying to get to their number. For example, at HubSpot I'm looking to add ~50 new people to my org this year, on top of replacing another ~125 who will be promoted into more senior roles at the company. This is an insurmountable amount of interviewing for my team if we had to go it alone. It can get tiring if not checked, and when you're trying to run an important process while fatigued, things aren't crisp. Unconscious bias can creep in, less information about the candidate will be retained, and hiring aversion becomes the more common outcome rather than making a good hire. In short, you make bad decisions, could miss out on a great candidate, or worse.

So how do you keep your hiring managers energized and able to run a tight process while still getting them the information to make a good decision?

1/ Diversify your interview panels. This has a bunch of benefits. Diverse interview panels perform better because they attract and hire more diverse candidates. And more diverse teams perform better (as studied here and here and here). Get others involved who will bring a different perspective to the interview process.

2/ Ask others who benefit from your team to get in on the action. For example, if you're hiring a BDR/SDR, get the AE managers involved. These managers will benefit from the sales pipeline of this candidate, or will promote this candidate to their team someday. If you're hiring for an Account/Renewal Manager, think about how the Customer Success managers might be interested in helping you. They want to see your team be successful. These tangential leaders will often want to help out in the process if asked. Why not loop them in and help yourself?

3/ Pull in the up-and-comers in your company who want to be stretched into something new. For example, we have a great Team Lead program run by Kelly Brooks and Ellen Rataj. It's designed to help some folks from our AE team figure out if the leadership path might be right for them some day. We're now beginning to train them up and involve them in our interviewing. What a great way to hit 2 key requirements of a good sales leader: diversifying your hiring panels AND developing up-and-coming leadership talent.

4/ Don't be afraid to say no to a candidate. In the past I've heard something like, "well, it was a bad interview and it probably won't work out but maybe they'll do better with someone else in the process. I didn't want to say no, it's not my role to fill." This isn't good for anyone. It puts the candidate through another conversation with the outcome likely chosen, and another manager has to spend another hour interviewing the wrong candidate. Show the candidate you care by not setting them up to fail. Give the candidate feedback and ask them to come back in X months once they've actioned it with demonstrable results.

Any other good ideas out there to help our hiring managers deal with these big hiring numbers?