What Recruiters Can Do To Ensure That Every Candidate In The Interview Has a Fair Shot

Recruiters can do to ensure that every candidate in the interview has a fair shot. Furthermore, certain applicants have access to information about the interviewing process or do not need it.

Some of us grew up knowing people who worked in big business— our parents, our colleagues, our professors at the college. If our time for job interviews came, they could give us insight on what we would actually be asked to do and help us plan for behavioral interviews or whiteboard or role-play questions. Ultimately, they could help us to understand what potential employers actually listen to when they ask those questions. 

Yet, some of us had none of that — and that's a huge drawback. Not knowing what to expect or how to plan would have an absolute effect on the interview performance of an applicant and on the interpretation of that success by corporate recruiters and hiring executives. However, in many situations, recruiting managers may hire someone who is a fantastic performer interviewee (a false positive hiring decision) or reject someone who is a bad interviewee who would have been a great employee (a false negative hiring decision).

My challenge for every one of us in 2020 and beyond

As recruiters, I feel we have a duty to help candidates succeed. I hope this might really be a New Year's resolution for us all. 

This does not mean sharing every little detail about what we're listening to in our questions about competence or asking them the key phrases to use to persuade a specific hiring manager. What we need to do is make the overall interviewing process transparent— the "what to expect" aspect that is not always open to all applicants. I mean, if your aim is to hire non-traditional sources to improve diversity, then it's just a colossal waste for a candidate to fail because they didn't know how to train.

So, what can we do?

1. Give some accountability and visibility to our hiring process 

As recruiters, we can publish a blog post on our main company website and write something outlining "what to expect when you interview us," on our career site. We can then share a link to this during the scheduling interview process and on Glassdoor. Google, for example, has a page like this on its career site that outlines tips for applying and interviewing and explains how they can help. If you're looking for a place that values your curiosity, passion, and willingness to learn, if you're looking for colleagues who are big thinkers who are keen to take on new challenges as a team, then you're a Googler in the future.  Taking three steps to becoming a Googler: 

1) Apply Found a great role? Check out those tips before applying.  

2) They interview differently. Here are a few pointers to help prepare you.  

3) Decide to understand how we make decisions on recruiting.

1. Point candidates to external resources to help prepare them for the interview

Imagine how helpful it would be to offer a step-by-step guide to a professional candidate who has never interviewed a big tech company that will help them prepare. Thankfully, there are sites like coding interview.com which do just that. That same site also provides company-specific guides. Here's one for Twitter, for starters.

I wanted my candidates to win when I was a hands-on recruiter. Before the on-site interview, I would do my best to prepare them, but honestly, I wasn't consistent in my approach and didn't have something pre-constructed to point them to. Now, building a little content and sharing it online is trivially easy, via email, social, on your career site, or on the sites that candidates use to research you, such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor. 

Our company, Recruiting Toolbox, is beginning to do our part by offering more "entry and information" for groups that are underrepresented. In addition to influencing the candidates by putting more information on our blog, maybe you can also volunteer to share your experiences from the employer/recruiter side at a community college or community group, and help people who don't have easy access to interview perspectives develop their confidence and skills.

Conclusion:

What Recruiters Can Do to Ensure Every Candidate Has a Fair Shot in the interview process.good or bad, behind you and keep looking until you have a job.