The Effective Hiring Manager

14No Panel Interviews

Panel interviews—three, four, or five interviewers all interviewing one candidate simultaneously—are a fairly common technique. You’ll note that we don’t have one in our recommended final interview schedule.

Do not use panel interviews, ever. They are the most common form of interviewing stupidity of which we are aware.

Since they are so common, you may be faced with deciding whether or not to use them. Here’s why you should not use panel interviews.

Reason Why Not #1: The Right Way

The way to conduct all interviews is one interviewer interviewing one candidate. The reason for this is the primary engine of great interviewers: The result of each interview is a hiring decision. Either the interviewer decides to recommend hiring or not. Your recommendation to the hiring manager is the equivalent of “I would hire this person.” Period.

If you are interviewing a candidate, you are not contributing to someone else’s decision on the hiring. You are deciding yourself to hire or not hire. The burden of this recommendation responsibility is enormous. Good hiring builds organizations; bad hiring destroys organizations.

The vast majority of corporate interviews are ineffective and inefficient, because the interviewer lacks the responsibility to make a decision and the training/knowledge to conduct an effective interview.

Many managers or interviewers would say at this point: “Well, okay, but that’s just not the way it works in my firm. Several of us interview a ...