As business owners, we wear lots of hats. It comes with the territory, doesn’t it? You best know where the business is heading, where you want to grow, and what it takes to get there. It would make sense that you are the best person to make decisions about employee selection and hiring, right?
The answer is yes……and there are benefits to including other employees in interviewing for new employee.
Benefits of Having Multiple Interviewers
- Multiple interviewers also means multiple perspectives on candidates. Other individuals may pick up on things that you missed and vice versa.
- This is a great opportunity to provide development for your other employees.
- While it may feel like it is taking more time to schedule additional times with other interviewers, it will actually mean less time for you individually. And truly, it will save a lot of time in the future if you reduce the chance of a poor hiring decision.
Who Else Should You Include?
To give you some guidance of your interview team, it may look like this:
- Business Owner (that’s you)
- Hiring Manager (if someone other than you)
- One Peer (at least one but could include more for a broader perspective)
- One Other Functional Leader
You can make this process even more effective by giving each set of interviewers different competencies to screen for in the interviews. Remember the Interview Questions to Save Time and Hire the Right People post we shared recently? Assign each interviewer one or two of them and have them probe these areas in their interviews.
Better yet? Try to have two interviewers screen for similar competencies. This is incredibly powerful in decision meetings where a candidate may have done poorly with one interviewer, but excelled with another interviewer – they were able to screen for an important competency and didn’t just have to rely on the results of one interview.
Tips:
- Make sure the other interviewers understand what questions they can and can’t ask in interviews.
- You’ve asked others to interview the candidates because you want additional perspectives, so make sure that you listen to their thoughts on the candidates. One of the best ways to do that is to have the other interviewers give their feedback on the candidates before you give yours.