Chat with us, powered by LiveChat Streamline Your Interviews - Top Echelon

Streamline Your Interviews

by | Feb 8, 2022 | Corporate HR, Recruiting Agency

In order to get the most of your recruiting process, you should always ensure that your interview processes go smoothly. These can vary from company to company or recruiter to recruiter. 

When it comes down to best practices, there are some steps you can always take to ensure you’re making the most of your interview process. At the same time, following best practices can help you keep interviews efficient and streamlined.

Follow our best practices on how to streamline your interview process!

 

Interview Steps

The first best practice is to keep all your interview stages consistent and always look for areas of improvement. Whether you’re an agency recruiter or an HR recruiter, there is a screening round to make sure that any talent that gets to interview rounds are legitimate enough to be there. This sort of best practice ensures that there is no time wasted further down the line.

After you have the screening round, the best thing to do is prepare ahead of time for what you want to get out of certain interview rounds. Being prepared to ask certain questions or have candidates prepare for certain things before the round is a really efficient way to streamline the interview process.

Immediately after the screening round, typically there is a round where hiring managers and recruiters get to know the candidate’s basic background and understand where they draw most of their expertise from. Usually after a basic background check from team members, there is some sort of a behavioral or technical interview round to make sure they are still a great fit based on their personality and knowledge base.

Other than these basic stages, you can have anywhere from 3 to 7 to double digit stages depending on the level of the job. Keep in mind that candidates can often be job hunting with other prospective companies. Keeping your stages and total interview processes to a minimum is best practice as well to not lose out on promising candidates. Not to mention that a lengthy interview process can really deteriorate your candidates energy as they may be working concurrently with the interview process.

At the end of the day, keeping a strong and consistent process for candidates is a huge plus. It helps show that you are confident in your process and are prepared to ask the right questions, showing that you care. There is also the chance to improve your process once you have one that is solidified. 

 

Take advantage of technology

One of the most important things that employers and recruiters have learned through remote work shifts is that technology can work wonders remotely. Things such as video conferencing, onboarding, background checking, and more – can all be done remotely with portals and different technologies.

Video conferencing

There are so many different software for video calls nowadays. Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft teams, you name it. Each one has been slowly engrained in workplaces due to remote work and it’s not by accident. Companies have realized that there are benefits to having workers be remote for all stages of work.

During the interview process, it can be really handy for workers juggling a current job with their interview process. Being able to take an interview call from home at convenient hours of the day is really helpful. It also allows many candidates to gauge a better first impression of how your company operates and is flexible surrounding remote work.

Onboarding

For many recruitment processes, onboarding can be pretty painful. This can be a thing of the past, with software and integrations specifically made to lighten the load for recruiters, hiring managers and candidates entering a role.

Getting the paperwork filled out in a timely manner with ease is something that can save many companies time and the hassle of getting it done. Electronic onboarding is something that many ATS and recruiting software have developed to make it easier on hiring managers.

 

Work in teams

For later stages of most interview processes, there are usually multiple team members working to understand how a candidate thinks and operates. Whether it’s in a technical interview or behavioral interview, being able to work with others can really ensure that your process is as streamlined and efficient as it can be.

Team members can help in a variety of ways during the interview process. Whether it be for decision making, involving diversity, or keeping on track to ask the right questions – multiple members can make a big difference.

 

Decision making

Have you ever been alone in a decision and not known what to do? Having another person or two on your side to be able to think through a candidate’s answers can be a huge dealbreaker. Being able to have four or six eyes and ears in an interview instead of just yours can be an advantage when it comes to remembering important information.

A strategy that some take when having multiple people in an interview round is to have one person take notes and have the other person ask the questions required in the interview. This leaves room for both people to do what they need to do to ensure the process goes smoothly.

Prioritizing DEI

Not only is it beneficial to have multiple people on your interview team, but having a diverse collective of people is really important to getting bias and perspectives nailed down. For hiring practices in 2022, keeping DEI top of mind is incredibly important. This starts internally with how you approach hiring practices, and being able to showcase a diverse team from the get go will make sure you’re getting rid of any implicit bias.

Staying on track

Sometimes in interviews, it can be really tricky to stay on task. For some hiring managers or recruiters, talking to someone in an interview can lead them to be curious or lead off into different areas that may not be as important for interview purposes.

Having others to keep you on track and maybe lead any misdirection back on course is really beneficial for time-management and ensuring that the efficiency of your interview process is a priority.

 

More Articles of Interest