Are you a Great Interviewer?

Are you a Great Interviewer?

Years ago, I was an editor for the literary review at my college. This was a highly inflated title as I didn't "edit" a single thing. I was a slush pile reader. My job was to read from the hundreds of unsolicited submissions and advance the few that I thought were great.

I was a good writer and a very good reader, but when I asked the lead professor if I was qualified to pick winners, she had a really good response. She told me that picking the winner from between 10 great pieces is extremely difficult. But, finding the 10 great pieces from the pile of mediocre pieces is much easier.

So, what does this have to do with interviewing?

I think what most people learn how to interview in much the same way. We start off being a first round interviewer. Our job isn't to hire the new employee. Our job is to weed out the not so great applicants and advance the potential candidates.

The skill we learn is how to weed out the bad, but not necessarily the skill to identify the very best.

Good Interviewing: Assesses the candidate based on their history, gets to know them a bit, and makes a gut-feal decision on their fit for the role and with the team.

Great Interviewing: Assesses the candidate using their history to identify key attributes and uses a structured interview process to compare the strengths and weaknesses of multiple candidates. This process is something you practice and get better at over time.

Great interviewing designs and interview to identify and assess what is most important for success in the role.

How have you improved your approach to interviewing over time? What are some things that you now do in every interview?