Reboot Hiring

6Interview Catalysts

Research from Randstad found that 53% of employees have left or considered leaving their jobs because they believe their employers don't recruit or retain high‐performing individuals.¹ Let's reboot thinking about interviews and reduce the chance of this happening at your firm.

To manage expectations, you won't find a list of interview questions here or a guide on creating them; your talent acquisition partner can help you design them based on your brilliant articulation of the hiring need. In this chapter, I have focused on easy ways to improve interviews and the consequences of poor behaviour in a search‐engine‐led world. I have also argued for keeping technology in its rightful place: supporting humans.

Shortlisting

For years, I have thought that the biggest issue in recruitment happens because managers struggle to articulate who they need to hire. The attempt becomes a flawed job description, to which recruiters endeavour to match resumes – documents people find hard to write and are equally flawed. The better the recruitment alignment meeting, the more likely sourcing and advertising will attract suitable applicants. However, no matter how well done, bias starts creeping into the process at the assessing and matching phase, whether by humans or AI.

In a 2023 survey by Greenhouse, 19% of US respondents admitted to changing their names on their resumes when applying for a job; 45% to sound less ethnic, 42% to seem younger, and 22% to sound like the ...