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February 28, 2024
A structured interview process can help companies to remain consistent and focused in their recruitment activities. By having a well-documented and structured interview process, anyone in the team can take the lead on recruitment and ensure that all company policies will be observed throughout.
Creating a structured interview process will require you to be aware of your current process and how this can be improved. From awareness comes the ability to reflect on what you could improve.
In this guide, we will explore a 5-step interview process that could be adapted to nearly all recruitment situations in order to formalise and streamline the process. It will also help to ensure that you make the right selection for your company, every single time.
The first step in streamlining your recruitment process and ensuring everyone is on the same page is to make sure you know how to narrow down the criteria. It’s common for hiring managers to be unfamiliar with the role they are recruiting for, which makes it more difficult for them to make judgement calls on a candidate’s suitability.
The first step in the recruitment process should always be to narrow down the criteria for the role and what skills and attributes the candidate should possess. This can be uniform across the organisation, making it easier for any department to create a job description that covers all bases.
Once you have a criteria for the role, you can then create an assessment matrix against which you can judge every applicant. This will allow you to read between the lines of applications and narrow it down to the desired number of candidates quickly.
The assessment matrix should include essential criteria and then desirable criteria. If you have very strong applicants, you can use this system to rule out all but the best. But if the applicants aren’t as strong, you can use this system to determine which of the weaker applicants should be invited to an interview.
At this stage, if you notice you are fielding lots of applications from unsuitable candidates, you may choose to return to step one and further refine the requirements to ensure you are attracting the right applicants.
You should now have a short list of applicants that you want to learn more about. Remember that every point of contact with your candidates will help to inform the candidate experience. The candidate experience is essential for your business reputation and could influence future applicants.
In short, if the candidate has a poor experience, you run the risk of them sharing this insight with other candidates and this could have a negative impact on your reputation. Factors that might cause a poor candidate experience include inconsistent communication, ghosting the candidate, or failing to give adequate feedback.
When planning interviews, make sure you are transparent about the process and keep consistent communication throughout. If a candidate has been invited to an interview and you decide not to take their application any further, you should always let them know of your decision rather than waiting for them to reach out.
The purpose of the interviews is to narrow down your selection. You should now have a shortlist of candidates that would be a good fit for your company. The final stage is to design practical assessments to determine if they have the right technical skills to succeed in the role.
This might not be required for the role, but it can be very useful for very technical roles. Asking for a work sample might negatively impact the candidate experience if they see it as working for free. Instead, make it a part of the interview assessment, or make it a task that you ask them to prepare before their second interview.
The final step in your structured interview process is to carry out due diligence. If the candidate will be working with children or vulnerable adults, you might need a DBS check. If the candidate will be working with large sums of money, a credit check might be required. At the very least, you should carry out a reference check. Just be sure to let the candidate know before you start your checks.
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