Subscribe via iTunes | Download the MP3 | Run Time: 25:52
Lacey Halpern joins the HR for Small Business podcast to talk about strategic interviewing. In this episode, Lacey gives tips, techniques and best practices for how to become a great interviewer. You will hear such things as what questions to ask, how many interviewers should be in the room, how to conduct remote interviews, how many rounds of interviews should take place, and whether or not anything should be done differently with key hires.
Resources
Strategic Interviewing Workshop
Interview Etiquette for Employers
Tell us what you think!
Brandon: Welcome to the HR for Small Business podcast, my name is Brandon Laws and I am with Lacey Halpern, a returning guest!
Lacey: Thanks for having me!
Brandon: You bet! We are going to talk about interviewing today, and in previous times we’ve always come up with questions and outlined this, but we’re really just going to shoot from the hip today, aren’t we Lacey?
Lacey: Yes we are!
Brandon: Let’s start at the high level here. What do you want employers to know about interviewing?
Lacey: It is such a hot topic right now. Here in Portland many, many of my clients are finding it really difficult to find the talent that they need. The market has changed, so if there’s maybe one thing I would want employers to know, and it’s something I’m telling my clients, is that if we’re strategic about our interviewing, if we spend time in the beginning ensuring that we’re hiring excellent employees, we avoid pain and heartache down the road. So it takes time to set up those systems and get your managers trained, but it is absolutely worth the investment.
Brandon: About how many interviews should probably take place during the course of the interview period with maybe one person?
Lacey: Gosh it really depends on the position I think, and probably even the size of your organization. If you’re bringing somebody in three times, four times, I would say that’s too many.
Brandon: ‘Bringing them in’ as in physical, in-person interviews?
Lacey: Yeah, that just seems like maybe we’re not getting the right information from the beginning, so let’s look at what questions we’re asking, or maybe we’re being redundant and maybe we don’t have the right people in on the interviews. It’s ok to have multiple interviews in one interview, I think folks are used to panel interviews now. I think maybe 20-30 years ago it was more one-on-one but now as organizations have grown, the business is focusing on team collaboration, I think it is more common to have a panel interview. So have the right people involved from the beginning so that they’re not having to come in three or four times down the road and ask the same questions, because that’s not efficient.
Brandon: And speaking of the very beginning of the process, I’ve heard of people doing phone screens or written screens or doing some sort of filtering system before you actually bring somebody in. Tell me what you’ve seen throughout the process, whether it’s been a phone screen, Skype interview, tell me about that.
Lacey: It really depends. So there are lots of vehicles through which you can get information from a candidate before they even walk into your business. You mentioned phone screens—I think that’s a really effective way to get some of the basic information from a candidate. I think that it can be helpful, especially if you’ve got folks who are maybe more
remote, or maybe your location is more remote, instead of asking them to come in for an interview. You can get a lot of information in a phone screen. It’s usually shorter, maybe 20-30 minutes. We’re really not focusing on culture in that interview, we’re really focusing on do they have the basic skills to be a good fit for the position, maybe clarifying some questions we had from the application. What’s actually another really good tool is if you’ve got an online application system, a lot of companies are moving to using those because it simplifies things for tracking. In some of those systems you can implement questions, and you can create filters where if a candidate is using a certain term, they either fall under one category which is maybe We need to contact this person right away! Or maybe if they’ve left something out or they put something in there, it might screen them out into maybe your ‘B pile,’ the lower candidates that maybe are not going to get the first interview.
Brandon: It sounds like there’s some risk with using applicant tracking systems, where it really automates that process.
Lacey: It can, yeah. You can really miss out on really top candidates just because maybe they didn’t use a buzzword that you had identified. So, I think having somebody who’s skilled in reviewing application information and, you know, just because someone gets moved into the B pile, in my experiences, I would still be looking at those applications because you want to ensure that people follow directions, they answer the questions if you’ve put questions on there, but you don’t want to miss out on somebody who could be a really good fit. So I think it’s a balance of both, you have to use both. And Skype is also a good tool, especially if you have positions where it’s difficult to find talent in your town or in the city that you’re in, and you’re looking at folks who maybe are relocating from other states, from other parts of the country. So using Skype or other tools like that is a great way you can get that face-to-face interaction because that’s important, you need that when you’re in an interview. That’s why people don’t just interview over the phone usually. Effective interviews happen because you’re paying attention to body language.
Brandon: Body language is so important.
Lacey: So important! Skype is just one tool, and you’re really only seeing the top portion of them and it’s kind of awkward but I think it’s better than just relying on a phone interview. And it’s more cost effective than flying in a candidate from across the country when you’re not quite sure they’re going to be the right fit.
Brandon: Yes! So talk about that, when you’re dealing with remote people or people from other states when you can’t find the talent, as you said, in the local area, who pays for the plane and for the stay during that interview?
Lacey: That’s a good question! You know, I think larger organizations often cover that. And for higher level positions, C-level positions, the company’s usually going to, you know, foot the bill for that.
Brandon: Seems like they’d better.
Lacey: Right? A smaller organization, maybe not. So trying to coordinate when a candidate maybe already has a trip planned to the area—maybe they’re relocating because they’re seeing family. So asking, Are you going to be coming in to see your family anytime soon? Maybe we can coordinate an interview around that. It really just depends on your budget, but if you know that you’re going to be relocating people, you know there’s no talent where you’re at, including the tickets, flight costs, hotel, room and board, taking them out to dinner, showing them around the town, all those things, that should be included in your recruiting budget. So just be thinking about that, I think it’s important.
Brandon: We know it’s a job seeker’s market right now.
Lacey: It is.
Brandon: Can you talk about signs from either side, like if it’s an employer’s market and having a pool of skilled employees to choose from or if it’s a job seeker’s market—just some signs from either side?
Lacey: Yeah, I think the economy is a really good sign, so when there is high unemployment rates, lots of talent out there, people looking for work, it’s an employer’s market, right? So the supply is higher than the demand, is a good way to put it. It’s a job seeker’s market right now because there are a lot of jobs out there. People are hiring, and there are few people to take those jobs. And I’m not saying that our unemployment rates are just so low there’s nobody looking for work—there’s people that are looking for work. But it’s specific niches, what we’re hearing from our clients and what we’re even experiencing ourselves is that finding people that can fit the unique needs of each business—that’s the challenge. Sure, we could fill a position. We could hire somebody off the street to come in and do the job, but really finding people who have the unique talents to fill the jobs, that’s the struggle. And that’s where we see that it’s more of a job seeker’s market than an employer’s market. It’s challenging.
Brandon: Talk about the interview process. You’ve mentioned, I think in the phone screen, you shouldn’t be necessarily looking for culture, more for competency. But assuming the candidates that actually get to the interview stage where you’re sitting face-to-face like you and I are right now, what are you looking for in those interviews? Maybe the first in-person, second in-person, and if it goes longer than that, what are you looking for at that point? Because you assume probably everyone has the skills to do the job.
Lacey: Sure! Yeah, if you’ve reviewed the application, ideally you’ve already identified whether they’re going to be a fit based on experience, skillset competencies. I think what you’re looking for when you’re doing an in-person interview with somebody is focusing on what competencies that you couldn’t glean from an application. So, for example, if 
we’re hiring a receptionist, and we identify in the application that they mention that one of their duties in their previous job was managing a switchboard, I’m probably not going to ask about that skillset in the interview, because they’ve already listed it on their application, I can verify it when I check references, after we’ve made a conditional job offer to the candidate. So I think the interview, the purpose of that, is to identify competencies like teamwork, collaboration, things like that, and then also focusing on culture. Identifying what are the company values that you have—that’s the first step. If you don’t have those identified, it’s very difficult, nearly impossible, to ask questions that glean information from someone about whether they’re going to fit into that company culture. So you almost work backwards. You identify what’s the value, so if the value is that somebody provides open and honest feedback, we’re going to ask a question about maybe a time where they had to do that, or maybe how they would handle a situation that was challenging where we would expect someone to give open and honest feedback. And those are behavioral and situational questions, and I try to ask those types of questions in an interview, because you want to know how somebody might react in a situation or how they’ve handled things before.
Brandon: Something comes to mind just about verifying if somebody has the skills. What role, and you don’t have to answer this if you can’t or if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, but what role does social media play in verifying people’s competencies?
Something that comes to mind is LinkedIn. You have all the skills that are listed and people can click the button that verifies them, and that sometimes can be a little…somebody recently said that I have skills in recruiting, and I’m not an HR person, I’m a marketing guy. So I actually got rid of that from my profile. But some people may add skills that they really don’t have, and people can endorse them for those. But what about reviews or content people are publishing or just something to support what they’re already saying in the interview? Can you use that?
Lacey: I think so! I think LinkedIn is a great tool and a lot of people are putting their LinkedIn profile, the site where you could go and look them up, on their resume. So I think that is a great tool. I think you have to be careful, so I’m glad you point that out, that anybody can get endorsed by their buddy that’s down the hall in the office for a skillset. So it’s a balance of references, which could be endorsements on LinkedIn, it could be letters of recommendation.
It’s interesting, I recently had a client tell me they had a candidate who asked for a letter of recommendation when they left, and they actually kind of talked with this person and said, You know, we really feel like things are shifting away from letters of recommendation and we’d rather endorse you on LinkedIn. We’d rather provide you with a recommendation on LinkedIn because it stays there forever and it’s something you can easily advertise to future employers should you need to do that.
So I think things are shifting a little bit, and I know when we’re doing recruiting, we’re not necessarily getting letters of recommendation anymore. And it used to be, six years ago when I was really heavily focused on recruiting when I was working in the staffing world, that was a lot more common. People would come to an interview with a letter of recommendation. I did that, even, when I applied at Xenium almost six years ago. So I think things are shifting. But LinkedIn is a great tool.
I certainly would not encourage employers to be Googling applicants or looking people up on Facebook or Twitter—those are not good vehicles through which we can gain information, because there are things you can find in there that are protected and things that employers just shouldn’t know about an applicant and have no bearing on whether someone is competent to do the job. But LinkedIn is a professional social media site that the purpose of it, really, is to network and to further someone’s professional career. So I think it’s a good tool.
Brandon: Talk about the interview process some more as it relates to questions. So in the in-person interview, let’s assume first in-person interview, second, panel, whatever it is, what sort of questions are you asking? Are you asking competency-based questions and maybe some examples of those too, and then culture-based questions as well?
Lacey: Sure! So, I actually have one client that breaks it up into 3 parts. One is a phone screen where they’re asking some simple questions just about skillset, verifying some 
things on the application, it’s fairly short, maybe 15-20 minutes.
The next in-person interview involves the leadership team, so they have the supervisor of the position in this and sometimes the owner is in this, and this is a small business of less than 30 employees so the owner has the ability to be involved. In a large organization it’s likely not feasible. And in that interview they’re asking questions about competencies, really focusing on the specific job that we’re hiring for and how this person’s previous experience is going to be relatable.
And in the third interview, it’s actually a team interview where they’ve asked the candidate to come prepared to interview the team, which is an interesting technique. So especially if you’ve got a position where communication is a really important competency that someone would have to have. Now the whole interview’s not focused that way, but they certainly set it up that that person’s going to come prepared to ask questions of our team, these are people that are in the same role as you or have been in the same role as you before, and then the team is also sort of vetting out and making sure that this person’s going to be a good fit. And we do something similar at Xenium, too.
Brandon: Could you do that based on questions that the candidate is asking of the panel?
Lacey: It’s part of it, right? So you could make an assessment.
Brandon: Because there are bad questions.
Lacey: There are, yeah! I mean, if someone just comes in and asks What do you guys do at your company parties? Maybe that would be a good fit for some companies, somebody that’s really interested in that. Maybe it’s an event-planning company and that fits in, I don’t know. For us here at Xenium and for a lot of my clients, that opportunity really helps determine how much research have they done about us? Hopefully some! With the way that the internet is, all of the information about our company is out there, so they should have done some research and look some stuff up. And they should come with questions. That’s not the whole part of that interview for that particular client, I would say it’s probably not even half of it. A large portion of it is the team asking questions of this person. And the one thing I’ll point out about that is that any person who’s involved in that new process has been properly trained on interviewing. Because we can easily, without even trying to or without even knowing it, cross over lines that can get an organization into trouble. So asking questions that are related to protected statuses, and usually it doesn’t happen because we’re trying to be nosy or inappropriate. Usually, we’re building rapport, trying to get to know someone, and information gets shared. The risk there is that if a company chooses not to make a hiring decision, that we really have a strong business reason for doing so, because we’ve gained information that could be, potentially, something that an employer could discriminate against someone with. So just having your employees attend a hiring training or be trained by your internal HR person or join us here at Xenium for one of our Intelligent Hiring trainings or Strategic Interviewing trainings, I think those things are critical.
“Because we can easily, without even trying to or without even knowing it, cross over lines that can get an organization into trouble. So asking questions that are related to protected statuses, and usually it doesn’t happen because we’re trying to be nosy or inappropriate. Usually, we’re building rapport, trying to get to know someone, and information gets shared. The risk there is that if a company chooses not to make a hiring decision, that we really have a strong business reason for doing so, because we’ve gained information that could be, potentially, something that an employer could discriminate against someone with.”
-Lacey Halpern
Brandon: Talk to me about formats. You’d mention, maybe early on in the process, maybe there’s one or two people involved from the hiring or interviewing standpoint, and then maybe later on the panel, but when you have that many people involved, it’s probably hard to get them involved in the interview. So are there things that they could be doing or have you seen structures like one person’s taking notes or everyone comes up with a set of questions and you take turns, what have you seen?
Lacey: I’ve seen a variety. If there’s maybe two people, one person taking notes and another person asking the questions—I think that works. It sort of feels more like interrogation, though!
Brandon: Good cop, bad cop.
Lacey: Yes, because it’s the structure of an investigation oftentimes in the HR world. If there’s multiple people in the interview, I think everybody should be asking questions. I think it should be structured, so everyone has the same set of questions and we maybe go through a rotation around the table and everybody takes a turn. And then you can always ask more probing questions and dig deeper if a candidate’s not maybe answering all the way, or they’ve shared something and you’re interested in asking some additional questions, I think that’s fine. But you always want to make sure that all applicants are being asked the same set of questions, and that would be difficult to do if each interviewer came with their own set of questions. So having everyone on the same page. And again I think it goes back to having this process dialed in before you start recruiting, if you can. So if you haven’t started hiring, now’s the time to be thinking about We have plans for growth—it’s time to get this all dialed in. You want to have questions that are created based on position, right? So I’m not going to ask the same questions of somebody who’s being hired for a receptionist as I maybe would for somebody who’s being hired to be a payroll specialist, right? Different set of skills, different set of competencies. Culture-based questions are likely the same, though. Across your organization you’ve got the same, ideally, culture established. The same set of values, so those questions can be really transferrable across the board.
Brandon: When I’m in an interview, I try my hardest to look people in the eyes and really pay attention to their body language and try to make that connection, but I often find that I can’t jot down notes during that, because it’s, in a way, disrespectful. That said, have you seen or is it allowed to where you could record an interview, either audio or have a video camera?
It’s weird, I’ve never seen it before, but going back—especially if you have a really highly sought after position, like a CFO or something. What if it’s a really important position and you’re doing what I just described, you’re looking them in the eyes, you’re watching body language, but you want to compare candidates—how do you do that?
Lacey: I think that, you know, you want to pay attention to the laws that are specific to your state. So that’s the first thing, because there are recording laws and you need to get 
consent from folks. You know, there are things that you wouldn’t be able to pull out of an audio recording. It’s why doing a phone interview isn’t always effective. So that would be something I would just keep in mind.
The note-taking thing, it can be a challenge. What I usually say to a candidate is, This time is really important to me, and we’re really excited about this position and want to make sure we’re making the right decision for you and for our organization, so I’m going to take notes. I hope you don’t mind that. And usually, especially if you’ve got multiple people in there, you can ask the question, engage in the conversation, maintain eye contact, and then when it goes to the next person, you can take notes. Plus, if everybody’s in there, everybody’s taking notes. So ideally you’ve got a set of interview notes that’s as complete as you can get. It doesn’t have to be verbatim, we’re not doing an investigation where we need to have very detailed notes. We’re just jotting down notes that will help us remember, especially if you’re interviewing across multiple candidates.
So I think video and audio—it’s absolutely something you could do. I’m not aware of anything that would have that be illegal, depending on the state that you’re in, just ensuring that you have consent.
Brandon: It might be more awkward more than anything.
Lacey: Yeah, it might be. It makes me think a little bit about if someone was being deposed for a lawsuit, those are often video recorded. And it could make somebody really uncomfortable, and what you want is for them to be comfortable so they’re open and honest. It might be off-putting to someone, so I would keep that in mind when you’re making that decision.
Brandon: How many rounds of interviews would you do?
Lacey: It really depends on the position, but I think probably two is enough.
Brandon: In-person?
Lacey: Yeah, I think if you’ve done a phone screen, yeah two in-person is probably enough. If you have the right people involved in the first interview and you have a balance of competency based-questions and culture-based questions, I really think that that’s enough. If you feel like you have enough information to make a decision, I think you’d move forward then to the hiring stage where you’ve made the conditional job offer and done whatever pre-employment screening whether it’s a drug screen or reference check, and you’re moving forward with that.
Brandon: For a key position, would you do anything above and beyond what you’d normally do for an entry-level position, let’s say?
Lacey: Yeah, I think there are some things you could do for a key position. If you have a board of directors, having the person meet with your board of directors, I think that’s something that could be really helpful. You just want to make sure you have the right stakeholders involved in that and be thinking about and maybe working with an attorney or your legal support on if you’re getting to a place where you’re going to be making a job offer, sometimes those positions, the candidate might require some type of contract of employment, so making sure you’re set up and prepared to negotiate the terms of that. But I do think it’s skill competency-based, and you may ask during the process to see some type of portfolio of work, but usually folks in those positions are going to come prepared to share with you their success and what they’ve done in their career. So I think just making sure that you’re taking the time and ensuring that you ask the right questions and got all the information so you can make the right decision. Hiring somebody at a high 
level, C-level, VP-level, and making a poor hiring decision can have an enormous effect on the culture of your business. It can be really detrimental.
Brandon: So, similar to how we’re going to end it here, what’s a good way to end an interview?
Lacey: I think making sure that candidates know what to expect—what’s next? So if it’s at the very beginning stages, let them know that. If you have more people that you’re interviewing, let them know that. I always ask people, Are you considering other offers? Because right now, with the market the way it is, people are getting scooped up before you’ve even had a chance to make an offer. So, is there anything you’re considering, and just let them know the timeframe, make sure they’ve had an opportunity to ask questions during the interview. If they’ve done it throughout, great. If they haven’t, give them a chance to do that at the end. Thank them for their time, and just stay in communication. Make sure that if you’ve taken the time to bring someone in, have a conversation, that you take the time to let them know your decision too. And usually that doesn’t happen in person, usually that’s something that happens through email or through a letter that’s sent out.
Brandon: Well, Lacey, it’s been fun, and I appreciate you letting me bounce all over the place with this topic. It is a fun topic and because employers are going through interviews so much I thought that this is a very timely topic. So if you have any resources that we could publish alongside this, I think the listener would be appreciative of that. Any links or resources that you can think of?
Lacey: There’s lot of great information out there about hiring. I think we have got some articles too on our blog that we could probably link to and some tools and resources that we have that we’ve created through some of our trainings. Also for those that are interested, anyone who’s listening, Xenium does two different hiring trainings throughout the year, our Intelligent Hiring training which is really focused on getting people the basic skills to be able to set up a hiring process, and our Strategic Interviewing training which we’ve had a lot of great feedback on, some great tools.
Brandon: Lacey Halpern, thank you as always!
Lacey: You’re welcome, thank you!