Experiential Interviews: Four Steps to Help You Identify Superior Talent
If you're still using conventional interviews to staff your company, then you're doing it wrong. Hiring expert Scott Wintrip reveals how to use experiential interviews to
pick the best candidate for the job every time.
New York, NY (April 2017)—Interviewing is a vital part of the staffing process, so in order to select the best talent for your organization's needs, the interview must be done right. Hiring expert and business consultant Scott Wintrip says that conventional interviews don't work, and that hiring managers across the globe are turning to experiential interviews—the kind where the candidate does real work to demonstrate his skills—to fill positions in their companies. Why? Because conventional interviews give only the smallest glimpse of the candidate—and an inaccurate one at that.
"During conventional interviews job candidates are always on their best behavior," says Wintrip, author of High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant (McGraw-Hill Education; April 2017; ISBN: 978-1-2598594-7-2; $30.00). "They say what you want to hear and share only the best parts of their backgrounds. This is why the person interviewed isn't always the same person who shows up for work. But experiential interviews allow employers to base their hiring choices on facts instead of guesses."
Wintrip explains that during experiential interviews, you get to see candidates doing sample work rather than speaking conceptually about the job. During experiential interviews, computer programmers can be given specs to write computer code, accounting candidates can analyze financials, and marketing staffers can design a promotional campaign.
"Regardless of industry, embracing experiential interviews can help you find better talent faster," says Wintrip. "When you get to witness candidates doing the job firsthand, you can automatically assess their skills and instantly have a complete image of the person you've just met. This way, there are no surprises or disappointments."
Keep reading to learn about the four stages of experiential interviews.
Stage 1: Compare the candidate's written materials to your company's hiring profile. Your hiring profile—the specific standards, skills, and qualifications you require job candidates to meet—gives you a point of reference when viewing each candidate's qualifications. Compare all candidates to your hiring profile by viewing their résumés, job applications, plus, if needed, a few written questions. Any candidate who matches the most important skills, experience, and education level moves on to Stage 2.
Stage 2: Conduct a brief phone interview. For most roles, a 20-minute (or less) phone conversation allows you to hear how the candidate communicates as you review their background and discuss the job. This stage also provides an opportunity to discover how their values, helpful behaviors, and personality features may or may not fit into your company culture.
"Effective phone interviews can cover lots of ground using short and simple questions," says Wintrip.
For example:
Why us? Motives are important. Knowing whether your candidate is inspired by your company's mission or just looking for a job will help you pick the best people.
Why now? Knowing what's driving a candidate's decision to job search is vital in choosing the right people for your company. Is the candidate desperate to make a change and ready to leap at the first offer? Or, is she happy and simply open to a new opportunity that could make life even better?
What job suits you best? Too often, interviewers ask candidates about their perfect job. Such a question sets up the candidate and the employer for failure, since jobs and companies are rarely perfect. Instead of asking about perfection, ask about personal fit.
If the candidate matches these additional requirements, they move to Stage 3.
Stage 3: Hold an in-person hands-on interview. Here, you'll have the candidate do sample work—both alone and with others—while interviewers observe. The interviewers can use this time to assess how well the candidate performs. If the candidate demonstrates an ability to do quality work, they move on to Stage 4.
Stage 4: Complete reference checks. Reference checks (and background checks, in certain roles) are used to confirm that the candidate fits all of the required criteria for the job. If they pass this last stage, they're offered a job immediately, or the next time a seat opens.
"Hiring managers are challenged to find the very best talent available," concludes Wintrip. "Experiential interviews are key in this process, and help you really get to know the talent and see how they will perform in real work scenarios. Allowing them to show not only who they are but what they can do helps them shine, and helps you make the best decision for your business easier, faster, and more accurately than ever before."
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About the Author:
Scott Wintrip has changed how thousands of companies across the globe find and select employees, helping design and implement a process to hire top talent in less than an hour. Over the past 18 years, he built the Wintrip Consulting Group (WintripConsultingGroup.com), a thriving global consultancy. Scott, the acknowledged leader of the on-demand hiring movement, is pioneering improved methods for recruiting and interviewing job candidates. For five consecutive years, Staffing Industry Analysts, a Crain Communications company, has awarded Scott a place on the "Staffing 100," a list of the world's 100 most influential staffing leaders. He's also a member of the Million Dollar Consultant Hall of Fame and was recently inducted into the Staffing 100 Hall of Fame. Scott and his wife, Holly, live in St. Petersburg, Florida.
About the Book:
High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant (McGraw-Hill Education; April 2017; ISBN: 978-1-2598594-7-2; $30.00) is available at bookstores nationwide and from major online booksellers.
