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The term “group interview” can be used to describe two kinds of interview formats. The first is the actual group interview and is the style we’re discussing today. This is the format where one interviewer (or a small team) interviews a group of candidates at the same time. The second type is where several interviewers interview a single candidate at once. People call this a group interview because it involves a group of interviewers, but it is more formally called a Panel Interview. Group interviews have pros and cons, so are they the right choice for your business? It’s not an easy answer, so read on to learn how to decide on an interview format for yourself. The Benefits of a Group Interview Format A group interview typically involves one or a small handful of interviewers in a situation where they interview numerous candidates all at once. This has a few notable benefits over other interview styles, though the benefits might not be beneficial to your company depending on your business.  Group interviews are efficient. Per SmartRecruiters: “Group interviews are efficient, allowing organizations to interview multiple candidates at the same time thereby saving numerous hours of labor.” If you have 10 candidates to interview for a position, a panel of two interviewers, and 30-minute interviews, the math is clear. Interviewing each candidate one on one is an investment of ten man-hours (30 minutes times two interviewers times ten interviews). Interviewing them in groups of five is an investment of two man-hours (30 minutes times two interviewers times two interviews). This allows you to prune through large candidate pools much more quickly and efficiently than if you had to interview them one by one.  Group interviews can showcase how candidates work with one another. Everyone will say they play well with others and work well in groups, but until you put them in a group scenario, you won’t be able to judge them accurately. With a group interview, you can see some beginning characteristics emerge. Which candidates treat each other as competition? Which ones pay attention, and which ones stay isolated? You can judge the character of your candidates in a situation you can’t normally look for in a standard interview.  Group interviews can show how a candidate reacts under stress. A group interview is a high-stress event, where each candidate not only has a shorter amount of time to leave a lasting impression, but they can see some of their competition in front of them. Which ones rise to the challenge, and which ones fold under pressure?  Certain kinds of candidates thrive in a group competition setting. The most motivated, outgoing, and charismatic individuals will typically make a lasting impression and thrive in a group interview situation. This is good if that’s the kind of person you’re looking to hire, but might not be valuable if you’re not looking for those personality traits. If you’re building a high-performance team for leadership , it can be great. If you’re looking for someone who can buckle down and get a job done but doesn’t need charisma to do it, you might not find them in a group setting.  You can test impromptu teamwork. A new employee will be challenged to get up to speed and work with people they’ve never met, and you can test that ability by setting team challenges for your group to solve, working as a group. You can see which candidates thrive in that situation, and which ones don’t. Again, this can help you find specific candidates for specific kinds of roles, but might not be useful for others. Overall, group interviews are most often used for situations where you need to hire numerous candidates, often for low-level, entry-level, or “ unskilled ” positions, like food service, hospitality, and retail. Positions that require specific character traits, specific skills, or a more detailed look at individual candidates will not benefit from group interviews. The Drawbacks of Group Interviews You may already be able to see some of the drawbacks of group interviews, and perhaps have experienced them yourself, either as a candidate or as an interviewer. There are some obvious drawbacks and some that aren’t so obvious.  Group interviews require multiple interviewers. While one person may be able to run a small group interview, they can’t watch everyone at once. A good group interview is also a panel interview, with 2-4 interviewers watching the group. Each panel member may have specific characteristics they’re watching for, or everyone might have the same interview scorecard . An added benefit of using a panel of interviewers is helping to remove bias from the interview process. One person might be more susceptible to a loud and charismatic candidate than another or might miss a critical detail that another will catch.  Group interviews are very public. In some situations, a candidate might not want their current employer to know they’re seeking a new job, for fear of repercussions. These candidates might not want to attend a group interview, because other people in the group might catch their name and post about it, or recognize them and talk about it, and news can filter back. This isn’t always a concern, but it can be a concern in some situations and for some candidates.  Group interviews are very impersonal. Per BrightHR: “The downside to the group interview’s time-efficient process is that you have less time to talk to each candidate. If you have a strong shortlist of candidates and enough time to meet them all, traditional interviews might still be the best option.” Even if you schedule a 30 or 60-minute session for a group interview, if you have 5+ members of the candidate pool, you still only have a handful of minutes to get to know each candidate. You often have to make snap judgments about these candidates when you don’t have time to get nuance, details, or even a sense of who they are as people. You may miss excellent candidates simply because a louder and more outspoken candidate dominates the conversation.  Certain kinds of candidates won’t shine. Group interviews are poor for assessing certain qualities in a candidate, such as focus, independence, and skill. Since you only get a superficial sense of who your candidates are, you can only test for surface-level skills and personality traits, and you can’t ask too detailed a set of questions.  A group environment will suppress certain kinds of candidates. Some people despise group interviews and, even though they may be perfectly suited to the job, will refuse to even apply or attend a group interview. Other people may excel in both an individual interview and in an actual job but might choke when placed in the competitive environment of a group interview. Group interviews also have a generally bad reputation, and they might reflect poorly on your company.  Group interviews can be tricky to perform and might require unique skills. Much like how one-on-one tutoring or mentoring is different from teaching a class of 20-30 people, interviewing a single candidate is very different from interviewing a group. HR managers who are skilled at interviewing in individual sessions might not have the skills necessary to wrangle a group. You will likely need to focus on planning the structure of a group interview carefully. You may also need to make special considerations for the dynamics of a group. How to Conduct a Group Interview Successfully If you think a group interview might be right for your business, it’s worth the effort to learn how to conduct them properly. A poorly-run group interview reflects badly on your company and can make you look disorganized, disrespectful, or both. Here are our tips for running one successfully.  Consider observing a group interview first. You may be able to network with other companies or experienced HR managers to sit in on a group interview, or you might find a recorded video of successful group interviews to learn from. Watching one in action and talking to the people who ran it can be very insightful.  Put together your interview panel in advance. You always want to have more than one interviewer present for a group interview. This panel should meet in advance, discuss what you’re all looking for in the interview, and make sure everyone has scorecards on hand. This allows everyone to be on the same page, able to divide and conquer with observing the group, and can help manage a group if it gets out of control. Additionally, your panel should rotate duties throughout the interview. Have each member ask questions in rotation, so there’s no clear “leader” who candidates will focus on impressing. Make sure your candidates know. The worst thing for a candidate is to show up to an interview, only to learn that it’s a group interview. Candidates will prepare for their interviews in advance, and preparations for different kinds of interviews take different courses. Some candidates will give up on your company after this kind of surprise. Don’t rely solely on the group interview. A group interview is meant to cut a large candidate pool down into a smaller candidate pool. It’s not meant to be everything you need to make a final hiring decision unless you’re hiring in bulk and plan to hire almost everyone who passes the interview. Generally, you will want to use a group interview as an initial filter and then set up individual interviews with the most promising candidates afterward.  Remember how group interviews are perceived. Group interviews often have a bad rap as little more than a cattle call for low-quality jobs provided by employers who don’t particularly care. As Terri Lee Ryan writes for Chicago Now: “Group interviewing can be one of the most humiliating tasks you do when you are seeking a job. It’s tough enough out there in our economy without having to subject yourself to the pain of a group interview. My advice is to never go to one of these interviews. If the company doesn’t respect you and your time enough to set up an appointment, take a pass.” This isn’t a unique opinion, and in fact, many high-quality candidates will share it. Group interview formats can suppress applications from some of the best candidates, so use them with caution.  Make sure to debrief. A group interview format, for the interviewer panel, should involve several meetings. In advance of the group interviews, the panel should meet to discuss the format and the division of labor. Immediately before the interview, the group should meet and refresh everyone on their roles, the scorecards, and anything new that may have come up. After the interview, the panel should debrief and discuss the candidates, their impressions, and any thoughts about both the candidates and the format itself. Are Group Interviews Right for Your Business? Group interviews wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have some benefits. The truth, however, is that they can often be overused, poorly managed, and inefficient. They can save time but at the cost of only checking for surface-level details about candidates. This means that group interviews are acceptable for hiring numerous candidates in volume, such as when staffing a new retail store from the ground up, or when hiring for low skill cap positions. Conversely, if you only have one role to fill or you need a more technical or skilled individual to fill a role, you should avoid group interviews. Additionally, modern technology tends to serve some of the purposes of a group interview. In the past, group interviews were often used as a “first stage” filter to take a large candidate pool and turn it into a smaller candidate pool, from which you can draw the best individuals for one-on-one or panel interviews, before proceeding to skills tests and hiring decisions. With modern technology, a large amount of this filtering can be done through algorithms, machine learning, HR-AI systems, and impartial judgments before the candidates reach an interview stage. The filtering can be done in advance, so you don’t need to spend the man-hours or the management necessary to organize a group interview. While the final determination is up to you, it often depends on the purpose of the interview, whether or not you should use a group interview. We’ve also compared phone and in-person interviews as well as video interviews, if group interviewing doesn’t sound like a good option for your company. The choice is yours. Are you considering a group interview? What has your experience with them been? Have any questions for me? Let me know in the comments section below! I reply to every comment and would love to hear from you.

An increasing number of companies, ranging from multinational enterprises to small businesses, are implementing second interviews in their hiring processes. As a business owner, HR manager, or another decision-maker, you may have wondered whether or not it’s a valuable option, or if other companies are doing it just because everyone else seems to be. The reality is, there are quite a few benefits to implementing second interviews. However, you should be aware of the potential drawbacks of doing so, especially in certain situations. Choosing whether or not to implement second interviews is a decision best left to your judgment, but we can provide the benefits and drawbacks to help you make that choice. Let’s start with the benefits! Pro: A Second Interview Can Have a Different Format or Structure The modern hiring process offers many options for interviews. You might want to work in a skills assessment, a practical interview, a traditional in-person one-on-one, a panel interview with company leadership, a group interview , or something else entirely. Using a second interview allows you to work in a second format. Here are some common real-world examples: The first interview with department heads and HR managers, followed by a second interview involving company leadership. This process allows the first interview to check for skills, experience, and personality, while the second looks into values, culture, and more nebulous qualities. The first interview conducted over the phone or a video conference, and the second interview in person. This can be particularly useful for national or global candidates, rather than purely local candidate pools. The first-phase group interview is followed by an individual interview. This is great for processing large numbers of initial candidates, then giving a more detailed interview for the best of that pool. When you’re limited to a single interview, you don’t have the leeway to leverage different interview formats for the unique value you can get out of them. Pro: A Second Interview Can Leverage a Second Interviewer Small and mid-sized companies in particular are frequently limited in the number of people they have on hand to interview candidates. You might only have a single HR manager, and empowering them to make every hiring decision might be too much on top of their other duties. A second interview allows small companies the flexibility to interview from different perspectives. The first interview can be conducted by the HR manager and cover the basics of the role, the company, and general questions or concerns from either side of the table. The second interview can involve (or be conducted by) a relevant team or department head, who knows more specific and detailed questions to ask, attributes to look for, and knowledge to test. Pro: A Second Interview Further Engages Qualified Candidates A second interview is built on a foundation laid by the first. You have a basic understanding of the candidate, at least on the surface, and they understand you. They can feel more at ease, more specifically prepared, and more comfortable. This means they will be more willing to have a relatively candid chat, discuss concerns they might be hesitant to bring up in a first interview, and will generally be more engaged with the entire process. “Holding two interviews gives you the power to create a more human hiring process.” – 1H Recruiting One huge benefit to the second interview is making a candidate more engaged with your company specifically. Most candidates send out numerous applications; when they reach a second interview, they may be more likely to put other applications on hold. They may be more confident of themselves for having reached that phase, which can help fight imposter syndrome and make them more likely to express themselves better. Second interviews are also an opportunity for candidates to ask about details that would be “getting ahead of themselves” in a first interview. If they have specific concerns such as availability of family leave, paternity absence, specific benefits, or other practicalities, they can use the second interview to verify that they’re likely to get what they need to feel comfortable working for your company. Pro: A Second Interview Allows You to Gauge Consistency Interviews are high-stress events. The higher-level the position, the greater the stress levels, especially for candidates who are desperate or in dire straits. Indeed, some HR managers find that composed and self-assured candidates may be those most prone to fail when pushed outside of their comfort zone. “Having a second round of interviews allows the company to look for consistency in your personality, soft skills, and responses. This gives hiring managers more confidence in making a job offer.” – Chron . Using a second interview allows you to observe a candidate twice, in different situations, and with different pressures. Are they more composed and more confident the second time around? Does a different format, an unexpected question, or a repeated series of questions throw them off their game? Perhaps most importantly, do their answers change from interview to interview, or do they show other signs of talking a bigger game than they can play? These are all questions you can answer by leveraging a second interview, particularly if you’ve maintained good notes (or even videos) from the first interview, and can review them before the second. Pro: A Second Interview Allows Less Engaged Candidates to Drop Out A less common but useful side effect of a two-phase interview process is that it helps you avoid wasting time on candidates who choose not to accept an offer. When a candidate goes through the interview process, they are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them. It can be frustrating for a hiring manager to choose a candidate and extend an offer, only to find that they’ve chosen to drop out and accept the offer of a different firm. It wastes time, it may make your decision-makers feel less confident in their choice, and it can leave you scrambling if they were the only top-tier candidate to make it. A second interview gives the candidates involved more time to determine whether or not they’re truly interested in the job. If they receive another offer, they can contact you for a counter-offer right away, or simply drop out of the running if they don’t think you can match it. If those candidates choose not to participate in a second interview, it saves your team time on interviewing and making a decision amongst the remaining candidates. Those are the primary benefits of hosting a second interview. There are a couple of drawbacks to second interviews, however, and they must be considered. Con: A Second Interview Takes More Time and Delays Hiring The biggest overall downside in a second interview is the time it takes to conduct. A two-phase interview process necessarily delays the hiring process by however long it takes to: Determine which candidates from the first interview are invited to the second. Organize and schedule the second interview. Conduct the second interview. Decide which candidate to extend an offer to. The actual duration of the second interview can vary. JobBoom says: “The second interview is usually the shortest, and focuses on gathering information that was not discussed during the first interview.” However, The Balance Careers counters with: “A second interview tends to last a half-day to a full day. Consequently, your team can assess whether the individual remains the person they thought they met at the first interview. People are competent at projecting an image of who they are for a couple of hours, but most individuals cannot fake an image for a whole day. In this time frame, your team also will take the applicant out for a meal, and this gives you another level of insight into the candidate’s manners, social competence, and interpersonal interaction skills.” Now, many companies are not going to spend all day on a second interview for a single candidate, nor are they going to take them out to a restaurant, but it depends a lot on what your interview process is. The higher-level the position you’re interviewing for, the greater the time investment each round of interviews will be. Con: A Second Interview Requires Close Communication with Candidates A traditional single interview process is often one of mediocre communication for many businesses. Candidates are often used to attending an interview and then hearing little or nothing back for weeks or months, before maybe receiving an afterthought as a phone call, email, or letter telling them that they didn’t get the job. “Ensuring your candidate is kept in the loop with updates in the recruitment process is essential. If a candidate doesn’t feel like they’re being updated properly, it’s more likely they won’t accept your job offer, or they may accept one with another company. If the process is delayed for any reason, let the candidate know so they stay engaged.” – Total Jobs . Second interviews need to bridge the communication gap. The candidates must be kept in the loop, to keep them engaged with the process and let them know that they should handle whatever scheduling considerations they may have. Concerns might include: Bringing in candidates from afar for a physical interview, and the travel and lodgings that requires. Keeping time available for a second interview, which may mean scheduling other life events around it. Maintaining communications so the candidate doesn’t write you off before you have time to contact them to schedule another round. Communication means several things. First and foremost, it means managing expectations. A candidate early in the process might need to wait for the first round of interviews to conclude before expecting a second, so they need to know when they’ll know more. It means keeping them in the loop on delays and other concerns. It also means giving them the respect of letting them know that they weren’t chosen for the position, and whether or not they’re on tap for a future opening. Is a Second Interview a Good Decision? Hosting a second interview for your position is a wise decision in some circumstances and is potentially unnecessary in others. While the benefits may seem to outweigh the drawbacks, the balance of the scale tips in certain situations. Primarily, the biggest factor is time. You might consider skipping a second interview if: You need someone up and running as soon as possible. When you’re in a rush to find someone to fill a role to pick up the slack, achieve time-sensitive business objectives, or get a team up and running immediately, a second interview may be a delay that you can’t afford. The size or quality of your candidate pool is low. While there’s a lot you can do to increase the quality of your candidate pools , you might have to deal with a lot of mismatched candidates and a relatively small pool. If the choice is more or less clear on the first interview, or there are very few alternatives, you may not need a second. Your open positions are entry-level. Many entry-level positions may not require a high level of skill, experience, or nuance to warrant a thorough second interview. All of these are, to an extent, related. The larger the investment in an employee, the more care should be taken in choosing them, and thus the more likely a second interview will be valuable. What About a Third Interview? Third interviews have all of the same considerations as second interviews. They are often seen in cases where the first interview is a large group interview or largely self-directed or one-way skills assessment/video interview. Only in cases of high-level positions such as executives and C-levels are third interviews more commonplace. Whether or not you require them depends a lot on what you hope to get out of them. That said, third interviews are often a sign that your interview process needs revisiting, to more fully analyze candidates before the interview stage, or conduct more comprehensive first and second interviews. It’s important to remember that second interviews are not an all-or-nothing process. You can choose to implement a two-phase (or even three-phase) interview process for your mid-level and high-level positions, while still sticking to a single-phase process, or a group interview followed by an individual interview process, for your entry-level positions. In the end, the choice depends on your interview process, your needs, and how well you can assess your candidates in a single interview.

Two pressures run counter to one another in the hiring process. On the one hand, you want to be thorough, and you need to make sure that you’re hiring the best possible candidates. Missing a critical character flaw, skill gap, or other indication of a poor worker means struggling to fit them into your team, losing them to churn, and starting the process all over again. On the other hand, you want to fill your open roles quickly. Every additional screening or assessment takes time. The longer your open position remains unfilled, the more stress the rest of your team is under trying to cover those duties, which lowers your business productivity. Skill assessments can help you pick out the best candidates from your shortlist, but they also add another layer of time and feedback to the process. There are clear pros and cons to using skill assessments, but what are they? Let’s discuss. Pro: Tests Can Be More Objective than Interviews One of the most significant benefits that skills assessments bring to the table is their objectivity. Every candidate receives the same test and is graded based on their answers. Their name, race, religion, location; all of these protected categories are ignored for the purposes of the test. Often, the tests will be fully automated, so there’s not even a chance of a proctor’s bias getting in the way. Of course, this isn’t a guarantee. Proctored tests, tests that require subjective grading of open-ended questions, and other such assessments might not be objective. Meanwhile, a well-structured interview can be objective and unbiased as well. Simply using assessment software or testing does not guarantee objectivity; it merely provides another route for objective filtering. Pro: Tests Can Indicate Candidate Capability The single most prominent benefit of a well-designed skills assessment is the chance for a candidate to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they know what they’re doing. A skills assessment for a developer might provide a piece of buggy code and ask for it to be optimized; there’s no way to get around this, the candidate either knows what to do or they do not. It does depend on the test to a certain extent. Some tests can be “gamed,” while some more common, popular tests have their answer keys leaked online. It’s always possible, as well, that the individual taking the test has external help on hand. Then again, people working in a job might not need to work in isolation either. If a candidate knows where to go to find an answer, rather than having obscure coding rules memorized, is that not itself proof that they would function well in their role? That’s a determination you’ll need to make. Pro: Testing is Cost-Effective If you have a relatively large pool of potential candidates and want to narrow that pool down, a skills assessment is one way to handle it. It’s trivially easy for your hiring department to administer an assessment to an entire candidate pool. All you need is a response informing the candidates that they’ve made it to the next stage of the hiring process, a link to whatever assessment platform you’re using, and the information they need to access the test. “Candidates can appear for the tests from any desired place of the world as long as there is an internet connection. Hence, the need for infrastructure to conduct the test or to reimburse travel expenses is eliminated. Features like online web proctoring, windows violation records eliminate the need for human invigilation, making the screening process more secure.” –  iMocha Testing platforms do cost money, but that money is a lot less than you would spend otherwise. Think about the costs of bringing a candidate in for an interview. You have their travel reimbursement, if any. You have the time your hiring team spends and the money it costs you to pay them for that time. Only so many interviews can happen in a day, so this can last for weeks. Compare that to the fee an assessment application charges and the time saved by sending out the assessment to everyone in the pool. Yes, you’re spending money, but it’s less money than you would pay otherwise. Pro: Tests Are Faster than In-Person Assessments As well as being cost-effective, assessment software is often time-effective for the same reasons. If you have to wait until a candidate is in your building for an interview before you can assess their skills with in-person testing, you have to invest a lot of time and money into every potential candidate. The primary issue here is that you need to narrow down your candidate pool further before advancing to this stage. A software-based assessment can start early and filter your candidate pool quickly, whereas an in-person interview and assessment should only be conducted near the end of the hiring process, where you’re relatively sure that the candidate will pass. Pro: Tests Are Standardized and Transparent Every candidate is given the same assessment, and the answer key is both standardized and available. As long as the test isn’t judged subjectively, the assessment grade can be considered more or less objective. This objectivity and transparency helps avoid adverse impacts or discrimination in your hiring process. An in-person assessment proctored by your hiring team might lack objectivity. A piece of software will administer the same test to everyone, regardless of their individual qualities. This does require the assessment software to be designed to be objective. It is an issue in some modern machine-learning or AI-based software; the “black box” nature of the algorithms powering it can be an issue and can open up either your company or the assessment provider to legal claims. Pro: Tests Can Be Automated In many companies, the need for new employees is near-constant. You might not necessarily have specific open roles in mind, but you know you always need new workers in certain areas, either due to high turnover, high growth, or high demand. Testing, then, can become an automated part of your hiring process. Candidates fill out an application and may even have to take an assessment as part of the application process. If not then, you can use preliminary filters to narrow your candidate pool and offer your assessment to only those candidates who pass the initial filter. All of this can be managed through your applicant tracking system and the testing platform, depending on which software you’re using and how well they integrate with one another. The entire process, from job posting to a shortlist for interviews, can be reasonably automated in an ideal world. While there are many benefits to using skill assessments and testing as part of the hiring process, there are some notable drawbacks as well. Let’s discuss them next. Con: Tests Might Not Be Validated There are three ways in which an assessment might not be valid for your hiring process and your role: The test might assess aspects of an individual that aren’t relevant . A test for a developer should test relevant coding languages, not something no one uses directly like Assembly or COBOL (unless the role is specialized for it). Likewise, a test for a developer shouldn’t include physical assessments. The test might be out of date . Some skill assessments rely on older ways of doing things that might not comply with modern best practices. Any good testing platform will keep their tests up to date, but this is worth verifying annually at a minimum. A test might be easy to circumvent . For example, a popular skills assessment in your industry and role might have its answers available online. In this case, you can’t necessarily trust the results of the test. Did the candidate know the answers, or did they look them up? Testing needs to be valid and relevant to your role. As such, at least for skills assessments, there is no single test that applies to your whole organization. Each department will need its own assessments tailored to the level of the role sought. Con: Tests Are Slower than No Testing While assessment software can automate the process and save you time conducting assessments in person, testing is still another phase of the hiring process that doesn’t necessarily need to exist. Often, assessments will add days of turnaround at minimum, though it can be somewhat mitigated by making them part of an automated process. Consider a situation where your initial candidate pool needs to be invited to take a test. Your first wave of filtering needs to be done; then, you need to send out invitations to the assessment with a deadline that is reasonable (often a week for turnaround), enough time to grade the assessments if necessary, and the final report to be given to your hiring team. This still leaves you with a list of valid candidates, albeit a smaller one, but adds a week or more to the hiring process. Whether or not this additional time spent is worth the investment will be a judgment your hiring team needs to make, as it will vary depending on the role, the urgency of the opening, and the skills necessary for the candidate to succeed. Con: Tests Can Scare Off Good Candidates Depending on the level of the role, a skills assessment might suppress some of your best candidates. This is most prominent at low and high levels. At an entry-level, candidates might expect a personality assessment, but a skills assessment might be seen as too much. If nothing else, they may not have the skills you want, expecting you to train them. Those who do have the skills might recognize that an entry-level job isn’t for them. At the higher level, hard skills cease to be as important as soft skills. At the upper management and executive levels, for example, a skills assessment is rarely worth it. You’re looking for leadership and visionary qualities, not hard skills, and those are difficult or impossible to test. Con: Testing Software Can Be Expensive Perhaps one of the most significant drawbacks to using a skills assessment platform is the expense incurred. These platforms have a wide variety of costs; some can be as cheap as $200/month, while others can be $5,000/month or more. Perhaps more importantly, the costs can vary wildly depending on your usage and your needs. Some skill assessment platforms are highly specialized; they’ll work well if you need a developer, but less so if you need a sales rep or vice versa. You may end up needing more than one assessment platform. Additionally, some platforms charge per assessment or seat rather than a monthly fee, which can mean costs skyrocket when you need a surge in hiring, making the hiring process even more expensive. Depending on your available hiring budget, this can be a challenge to handle. Con: Some Tests Can Be Discriminatory Depending on the assessment, it could potentially be discriminatory. Yes, one of the pros up above was the ability to avoid discrimination. However, that only applies to tests that are limited and objective. Tests that are not objective or test things not directly relevant to the role can be used as the basis for a discrimination suit. “This seems to be a paradox since tests are relatively objective. But cognitive ability and knowledge tests can disproportionately screen out non-white candidates. This can result in costly lawsuits. One example is a 2012 discrimination case where a company had to pay $550,000 in back wages to minority workers it rejected through a pre-employment test.” – Workable. As with every part of the hiring process, you need to take adequate care to ensure an objective and non-discriminatory system is in place. Con: Some Things Can’t Be Tested Many aspects of an individual necessary for their success in your company cannot be tested. It’s challenging, especially with an unmonitored software test, to assess leadership ability, communication skills, ability to work with a team, and other aspects that make for a good employee. Testing can only help refine some elements of your hiring process; it cannot replace them. Skill assessment platforms and software can be a great boon to your hiring process when used correctly. The drawbacks to using them can be mitigated or avoided, as long as you know, they’re there. Use assessments as necessary, but don’t try to use them for purposes they aren’t meant to serve.

Conducting interviews is a core part of the human resources team, but there are several ways to go about it.  Two of the most common options are phone interviews and in-person interviews. Both options are viable for interviewing a candidate, but they have their pros and cons. Picking the right interview for the right situation is crucial, so it’s a good idea to review the advantages and disadvantages, both for your business and the candidates themselves. Read the rest of this blog post to learn about phone vs in-person interviews.  The Pros of Phone Interviews Phone interviews have been around nearly as long as phones themselves, and they are an essential part of the hiring manager’s toolkit. Part of the reason is the advantages they have over other forms of interview . ✅ Phone Interviews Eliminate Geographic Distance Perhaps the strongest advantage of a phone interview is the ability to conduct the interview regardless of the geographic distance between the hiring manager and the candidate. A candidate in California can interview for a job in New York and the only concern is choosing a time that’s appropriate for both parties. Challenges increase with scheduling phone calls in different countries – a candidate in Australia interviewing for a job in New York will need to be up in the middle of the night – but arrangements can always be made. ✅ Phones Calm Some Interview Anxiety Passing an interview and winning a job can be a life-changing event for a candidate. Stakes are high, and so too are stress and anxiety. There are a lot of different ways to alleviate anxiety in candidates , but conducting a phone interview can be helpful for many people. Phone interviews eliminate some of the sources of stress, such as an unfamiliar office location, worrying about dress code, eye contact, and dozens of other things that are on their mind the day of their interview. ✅ Candidates Can Use Resources and Notes In a real job setting, employees are rarely tasked with performing their job without resources on hand. An internal knowledge base is a common resource for most companies, so why shouldn’t a candidate have access to notes and information to help them with an interview? They might not be able to bring their notes with them to an in-person interview , but they can keep them on hand for a phone interview. ✅ Effective for Initial Screening Phone interviews are shorter and have lower stakes than in-person interviews, which makes them ideal for the early phases of screening your candidates . Once your ATS has performed a basic screen and you’ve selected your initial candidate pool from your available applicants, you can conduct phone interviews to select the best candidates to proceed to in-person interviews. The Cons of Phone Interviews Phone interviews may be a tried-and-true form of an interview for businesses, but they aren’t 100% effective at selecting the best candidates for a job. That’s why other forms of interviews still exist, after all.  Some of the biggest drawbacks of phone interviews include: 🟥 Some Candidates May Have Phone Anxiety Job interview anxiety is normal and expected, but some people have phone-centric phobias or phone-specific anxiety . This often results in poor performance in an interview when the candidate would perform exceptionally during an in-person interview. Unless the role is phone-heavy, in which case, the candidate is self-selecting. 🟥 It Can Be Difficult to Build Rapport and Judge Character One of the greatest challenges with phone interviews is the loss of many communication cues that are present in in-person conversations. Body language, facial expressions, gestures, and other non-verbal communication cues are lost over the phone. When you ask a question and hear silence on the other end of the phone, is the candidate stumped or processing a wealth of information? Body language can tell you, but the phone cannot. How important this information is, well, that depends on a lot of factors and is the subject of scientific study. 🟥 Duration of Interviews is Often Shorter Phone interviews tend to be shorter and more formulaic than in-person interviews, where a conversation can emerge and meander organically. Phone interviews tend to be a shorter call-and-response format with fixed interview questions , and little room for deviation. While this can help in impartial judgments on the candidates’ answers, it also gives less leeway for nuanced and complex answers. 🟥 Technology Can Fail A person will not suddenly lose their ability to speak in the middle of an in-person interview. On a phone interview, however, any number of technical issues can get in the way of the session. Phones disconnect or lose signal all the time, connections can be poor and lead to low voice quality, and so on. Interviewers and candidates must both be vigilant and prepared for technical issues. The Pros of In-Person Interviews In-person interviews have been conducted for as long as people needed to take on other people to accomplish tasks, and are older than most societies, though many things have changed over the centuries. Meeting candidates in person has many distinct advantages. ✅ Longer Interviews Give More Time to Build Rapport Where a phone interview might last for 15-20 minutes, in-person interviews can last for 30 or more. This gives you a lot more time to cover answers, discuss topics, and gain a solid impression of the person you’re interviewing. You can take the time to build rapport and have a more honest conversation with a candidate in an in-person interview setting than you can in a phone interview. ✅ There’s More Flexibility to Clarify and Expound Upon Questions and Answers Conversations can ebb and flow in an in-person interview. You can express curiosity and leverage excitement to get a candidate to come out of their shell, you can get a stronger impression of who they are beneath their interview preparation, and you can take the time to dig deeper into the answers they provide. This is especially important in interviews for technical roles, where a technical advisor or manager of the given department can ask more technical questions to assess skills and thought processes that a typical HR manager might not know enough to assess. ✅ Personal Charisma Plays a Role What kind of person are you dealing with as a candidate? Are they introverted or extroverted, type A or type B, team players or lone wolves? Assessing the type and quality of the person you’re interviewing can be especially important when you’re putting together high-performance teams or are seeking highly-skilled, charismatic, or assertive people. A lot of this, again, comes from non-verbal cues and elements of body language that don’t come through in a phone interview. ✅ Effective for Later Screenings Phone interviews have a lower barrier to entry and lower stakes. Most people recognize that a phone interview is merely the first step of an interview process (though the reality is it’s somewhere in the middle). In-person interviews are better for the narrower candidate pools when you’ve chosen the best options to interview and need to figure out which of them is the best one to fill your open positions. The Cons of In-Person Interviews In-person interviews have a few drawbacks of their own, of course. Otherwise, they would be the only interview style used. The truth is, while they play an important role in the hiring process , they aren’t perfect. 🟥 Geographic Distance Causes Problems and Inhibits Some Candidates Conducting in-person interviews is difficult for candidates who live outside of your local geographic area. They may have to drive into town, they may have to fly in and book a hotel for a night, they may have to make arrangements to visit at the appropriate time. This can be even more difficult if you’re hiring internationally; the need to navigate visas, customs, and other travel roadblocks can make it difficult to conduct such interviews, especially on short notice. 🟥 Dress and Physical Impressions Bias Interviews Everyone judges the people they meet, no matter how much effort they put into eliminating those judgments. While a large part of the modern hiring process relies on assessments, paperwork, objective questions, and other techniques to eliminate bias, some elements of physical appearance can still influence decision-making when not properly accounted for. For example, when you are presented with two otherwise identical candidates, do you hire the one with the fitted suit or the one with an ill-fitting suit? By rights, this shouldn’t matter, but the impression they leave on you is different. Dress is one of the least dangerous judgments to make, as well; often, inherent biases in terms of gender, race, and presentation can be much more insidious and dangerous. As Lou Adler writes for LinkedIn : “It’s imperative to prevent biases from creeping into the interview as much as possible to make fair (and good) hiring decisions.” 🟥 Scheduling and Confidentiality Can Be Important When interviewing a candidate with the intention of hiring, there may be concerns about scheduling and confidentiality. It can be difficult for an employee to take a day off to interview for a new job, and if they are discovered, that can cost them their existing job regardless of whether or not you extend an offer. Scheduling becomes a juggling act, and poor interview scheduling practices can jeopardize otherwise great candidates. What About Other Interview Formats? There are other formats for interviews that can be conducted in the modern age. ✅ Recorded interviews are interviews where the company sends a questionnaire to candidates, who record videos of themselves answering the questions. These allow the candidate to prepare for their questions ahead of time, record multiple takes to get a good one and showcase some elements that are missing from phone interviews, such as body language and gestures. However, due to the asynchronous nature of the interview, there’s no call-and-response. As such, these interviews are rarely used. ✅ Video interviews are interviews conducted through a video chat service, such as Skype or Zoom, or with a dedicated video interview service . They have many of the advantages of an in-person interview while minimizing some of the drawbacks such as the need to bring candidates in from disparate geographic areas. The largest drawback to video interviews is their reliance on technology. Like phone interviews, video chats can fail, and technical issues can plague conversations. Unlike phone interviews, many more pieces of technology need to work in tandem for a video interview to be a success. If someone’s microphone, speaker, camera, or internet connection fails, the entire interview fails. With a phone, at least it’s just a phone. That said, there has been an explosion in video interviews in the past year, primarily due to the safety concerns caused by the Covid pandemic. They’re “the next best thing” to an in-person interview, so long as the technology cooperates. ✅ Chat interviews are rare but may be used for initial filtering, and some modern companies are experimenting more with them. These are similar to phone interviews, in that they are usually used for early screening. They use a platform like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or simple SMS messaging to conduct a brief interview. While this interview style can be useful for some basic screening, and for engaging with potential cold candidates or old candidates who may not still be interested, they have many disadvantages. They have all of the disadvantages of phone interviews, and then some. The absence of voice through chat is even more difficult for both interviewers and candidates than voice-only communications. Additionally, many of these services are primarily mobile, and mobile devices are slow and difficult to type through, with autocorrect leading to errors as often as it corrects them. ✅ Other interview styles exist as well, such as group interviews and all-day skills assessments. These styles have their unique purposes, such as serving to filter through large candidate pools where requirements are not strict. Often, these are used for entry-level jobs, internships, and “unskilled labor” positions. The social dynamics can be of mixed usefulness. Overall, there’s no single best interview format. Each interview format has a specific role to play. Chat and recorded interviews are not in vogue, and they’re likely valuable to some specialized companies.  Conclusion  To sum it all up, phone interviews are a good screener for the middle of the hiring process. Video interviews can bridge the gap between phone and in-person interviews, and can occasionally serve to replace one or the other, or even both. Which you choose is up to your hiring process. Which you prefer, phone vs in-person interviews, depends mostly upon your hiring process. Contact our team today to learn how we can help you with building your team.

A critical part of the hiring process is testing your candidates to make sure they will fit in with the company. This means testing several different aspects of a candidate; their ethics, their personality, their skills, and so on. Hiring the wrong people can seriously hurt your company morale, culture, happiness, and productivity. There’s a dilemma here. Tests have a difficult time discerning the truth. For every pre-employment test out there, there’s likely a guide somewhere written about how to pass it. People looking for work will do whatever they can to secure a position, and that includes studying for tests that measure personality, choosing options they think you’re looking for rather than options that reflect themselves, and bending the truth. Engineering a pre-employment assessment is a complicated and time-consuming process, and you never know how accurate it will be until you’ve used it and measured the results. However, you can take advantage of the work others have done before you by using tools, resources, and platforms that already exist to do the bulk of your testing, with custom assessments added as necessary. Identifying Necessary Testing Assessments are an important part of the hiring process , but they can also suppress qualified candidates who don’t want to jump through hoops when their experience should be plenty of evidence of their skills. Determining how much and what kinds of tests are necessary is the first step towards developing a thorough, useful assessment process. As SHRM says : “To implement a pre-employment testing process, the employer must 1) determine which tests are necessary; 2) select or develop a test that appropriately evaluates the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) needed; and 3) monitor use of the test. Implementing a valid testing process can be time-consuming, but the wealth of information gleaned may be worth the effort. The first step is to identify the KSAOs required to perform the job: Knowledge is information the employee must possess (e.g., knowledge of accounting principles). Skills are learned behaviors needed to successfully perform a job (e.g., typing). Abilities are observable behaviors, including those needed to perform the physical requirements of the job (e.g., climbing stairs, lifting). Other characteristics include any other job requirements (e.g., attitude, reliability). The process of deciding which tests to use begins by isolating the KSAOs the new employee must possess on Day 1. In other words, what must the person know and be able to do without additional on-the-job training? Once the list of KSAOs is created, the employer can consider testing options.” Once you have some idea of the KSAOs you need to test for, you will have a strong basis with which to judge the assessments and tools you can use to look for them. It does you no good to test for accounting skills for an entry-level role that can be trained to learn them. It does you no good to test for basic programming competency for a high-level role that needs much greater levels of knowledge. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all assessment. You can use modules of different tests for your entire organization, such as ethical and moral personality assessments, but every role should have unique assessments to analyze the viability of a candidate for that specific role. Special note: Remember to make sure that your tests do not, intentionally or accidentally, screen for qualities that are protected. Questions that can be construed as testing for qualities associated with races, genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations, or other protected qualities can open your company up to discrimination suits . Platforms, Tools, and Resources Determining precisely how to use any individual tool or resource is an organizational decision; we cannot make specific recommendations. What works for one company might not work for another. Thus, we’ve put together as broad a list as possible, rather than a narrow list of specific resources. By no means should you attempt to use everything on this list; rather, research each option and determine which few are ideal for your organization. Modern Hire Modern Hire is a complete hiring platform with an assessment module. Their novel approach to pre-employment assessments uses predictive intelligence and machine learning based on a broad sample of candidate data harvested through their platform. While their assessments can be used by just about any company, they specialize in Healthcare, Staffing, Retail, Financial, Logistics, Hospitality, and Call Center industries. VICTIG VICTIG is a company specializing in employment screening, particularly with background checks, drug screening, and motor vehicle reports. This makes them an excellent platform to use to screen and assess candidates who apply for roles where they’ll be driving, handling heavy machinery, or have great personal responsibility. Plum Plum is a relatively new platform founded in 2012 to use machine learning and predictive artificial intelligence to screen and filter candidates. They boast that “Plum is 4x more accurate at predicting future success than resumes alone,” and they offer the ability to develop a neat and orderly shortlist of candidates, just in case your first choice falls through. Test Invite Test Invite is an assessment platform with a flexible engine you can use to develop your assessments. They have pre-designed assessments for employment screening , English proficiency, and certain skill aptitudes, and can be used to develop your tests as well. You can use pre-created assessments, create your own, or mix and match with their library of questions. Toggl Hire Toggl offers several different services for businesses. The Hire platform is an assessment engine offering pre-employment tests. Their platform is one of the most user-friendly of the bunch for candidates, though your company may find it a bit restrictive. QuizCV This company provides an online, web-based testing platform. They have English proficiency, aptitude, cognitive ability, employment, and free-form tests. It’s a very specialized platform, with few additional features or integrations. It’s good at what it does, but it’s likely best used by smaller companies with more generalized assessment requirements. Qualified Qualified.io is a specialized assessment platform aimed entirely at software engineers and developers. They offer at-scale assessments with highly technical skills and aptitude testing, segmented by specific skills in specific kinds of software, such as AngularJS and Ruby on Rails. Overall, it’s an excellent assessment platform for testing software developers, and useless for other roles. Adaface Adaface is another platform meant to assess software engineers and developers. Unlike Qualified, Adaface has assessments for psychometrics, general aptitude, and lateral hiring as well as the traditional coding tests. They also offer a few more general assessments for logical reasoning, data interpretation, English proficiency, and business analysis, among others. Aspiring Minds Aspiring Minds is another relatively new platform claiming to use artificial intelligence to optimize assessments and the overall hiring process. They offer a range of assessments including cognitive ability, personality, coding, job simulations, job skills, and customer service tests. They’re also used by over 100 different Fortune 500 companies. Codility Codility is similar to Adaface and other platforms made specifically to assess developers and coders. You can work with your IT department to create assessments customized to your company or use the evaluations they already have in place. HR Avatar HR Avatar offers a custom test builder, along with a catalog of existing tests you can use. Their catalog is robust and offers hundreds of assessments for specific jobs and roles, such as account managers, purchasing agents, and programmers to bakers and bartenders. Additionally, they offer remote test proctoring, video interviews, and reference checks as part of their services. TestDome TestDome is another specialized testing platform used to assess skills. They can create a new, customized test for your organization, or use one of the hundreds of existing tests for specific skills. They offer specific tests for developer skills like Python and Ruby, as well as more generalized skills such as time management, digital marketing, and math. Harver Harver is a volume hiring platform and recruiting solution with built-in assessments. It’s another AI-powered platform and is very popular amongst large global brands, including Netflix. They measure aptitude, culture fit, and soft skills, including a predicted ability to succeed throughout the candidate’s career. Interview Mocha Another popular platform, Interview Mocha is a skills testing platform with thousands of different skill templates, which can be mixed and matched to create customized assessments for your open roles. While they have many developer-focused skills, they also have finance, business skills, and many more options. Vervoe Vervoe is another AI-based platform with proprietary “talent trials” specifically designed by industry experts to test real, practical skills a candidate in a given role would need. Assessments are aimed at specific roles rather than skills and can test how an individual would perform in a role as a whole, rather than requiring you to holistically judge several different assessments that don’t encompass the whole picture. Pymetrics Yet another AI-based candidate assessment platform, this one uses specifically behavioral assessments to build a profile of a candidate. They explicitly focus on encouraging diversity in their clients and use a novel approach to assessment in a gamified neurological testing process. Xobin Xobin is a more traditional assessment platform, largely specializing in white-collar jobs. Their library of existing tests – containing over 1,000 pre-built assessments – includes IT, Marketing, HR, Sales, Design, Customer Service, Logistics, Accounting, Finance, Admin, and more. This huge array of tests can be time-consuming to comb through, but extremely useful for companies with disparate needs looking to test them all through one platform. Prevue HR Prevue is a relatively standard sort of assessment platform with one unique approach. They offer a novel “motivations and interests” assessment that helps separate candidates who are only in it for the money from those who have the passion and inspiration to succeed in their roles. Used carefully, this can be an incredible boon for high-level and creative-focused roles in particular. Athena Quotient Athena Quotient is a platform offering pre-employment screening tests that make use of a complex, proprietary algorithm analyzing overall judgment. It’s a powerful, unique assessment that was nominated for a Nobel Prize. It’s also a relatively quick assessment, demanding only around 30 minutes of time to complete. Great People Inside This platform offers pre-employment assessments but continues after hiring to help analyze and drive performance from your employees once they’ve been hired. It’s a way to help adapt your business processes to encourage success from the inside out, rather than what most other platforms do, which is bolster hiring but leave the rest to you. Owiwi Owiwi is a unique, novel candidate assessment tool that takes the form of a video game. Rather than a simple gamified testing process, this is a full game, where the choices a user makes throughout their playthrough analyze aspects of the person’s character, their soft skills, and their general traits. It’s certainly unique, though how well it fits with your organization may be up to you. Select International Select International is an assessment platform specializing in manufacturing, healthcare, safety, and leadership roles. Their overall platform is more or less standard, but their focus on certain industries is relatively rare amongst assessment platforms. They also offer specialized assessments for executive and leadership roles, which are traditionally left out of many assessment programs. The Predictive Index This company offers a “talent optimization platform” that provides assessments aimed at linking behavioral traits with job performance. Their history of successful utilization allows them a wealth of data they can leverage to refine the accuracy of their assessments. They have worked with over 6,500 clients and have 60 years’ worth of science on hand, having provided over 27 million assessments over the years. Wrapping Up There is no shortage of candidate assessment platforms available. Some are simple testing platforms. Some are advanced, AI-driven psychometric examinations of potential hires. Some are stand-alone, while others link with existing applicant tracking systems . There is something for everyone out there. We recommend spending some time determining what, precisely, you want to assess. Are you looking purely for technical skills, and relying on interviews to assess culture? Are you looking for a technological solution to assessing culture, while training candidates for the technical skills they need on the job?  Every company has different priorities, so it’s important to identify those priorities in order to pick the best option amongst these platforms. Are you seeking the most talented employees? Contact us today for expert guidance and finding the perfect fit for your company’s unique needs.

The ongoing global pandemic has thrown the labor market into disarray. Dramatic unemployment, dramatic increases in hiring, a massive shift towards remote work, and an increase in remote hiring have all thrown historic trends out the window. Companies right now are cautious. Many have made the shift to remote work and, six months in, have gotten over the initial hurdles. Business is returning for many sectors, and with the holidays ramping up , many companies are looking to surge their hiring for the season. Yet with a focus on remote work in many areas, screening your job candidates remotely is a huge advantage. The traditional series of in-person interviews is not safe, and even with precautions in place, many well-qualified candidates are turned off by the prospect. How can your company screen candidates remotely, without putting yourselves or your candidates at risk? Here are five methods you can use. 1. Resume/CV Analysis One of the oldest methods available to HR is the resume analysis. A resume is meant to be a tailored document that showcases the relevant skills, experiences, and work histories for the role the applicant is applying for. An unfortunate reality, though, is that the average resume only gets around six seconds of attention before being discarded. When you can’t talk to a candidate in person, it’s worthwhile to spend a little more time looking at their resumes first. What should you look for? Length. The length of a good resume should never be more than two pages. A single page is often not quite enough space, especially for upper-level or technical positions, while anything longer means the applicant isn’t thinking about what is relevant to their chosen role. Design. A resume should be well-planned and well-laid out to present information in a logical, self-contained manner. If it’s scattered and poorly organized, it reflects poorly upon the candidate. Exotic formats, designs, and shapes for a resume aren’t necessarily beneficial, and should only be considered relevant for creative design positions. Language. Appropriate use of language is important. Make sure the candidate isn’t disparaging of their past employers. Make sure they have a firm grasp on the technical aspects of the language and aren’t making obvious grammar and spelling mistakes. Don’t worry about simple language, though; unless the position requires compelling use of language, it’s not necessarily reflective of the applicant’s skills. Experience. Your ideal candidates should have job experience relevant to the role they’re applying for (unless it’s an entry-level position). Entry-level jobs mean you should look more into skills and education, though relevant work experience can be valuable if it exists. For example, if you’re hiring a project manager, you want your candidate to have some kind of project management experience. If you’re hiring a retail cashier, their experience isn’t relevant. Tailoring. How well-tailored to the role is the resume? Do they include skills, experience, and accolades only relevant to other industries or other positions? This can be a sign that the candidate is just sending the same resume out to every position they come across, and they aren’t thinking specifically about your company or about the role to see where they fit in. Cover letter. If you want, you can ask for a cover letter along with your applications. You can then filter candidates by how well they follow directions, and how it fits with their application. A cover letter can also give you some idea of the candidate’s personality and cultural fit with your office. Now, there are some drawbacks to using resume filtering as a screening method . It’s time-consuming. Going through resumes manually is tedious, especially when you have thousands of them on your plate. It’s no wonder that so many are discarded right away, for superficial problems. Authentic Organizations says: “Studies show that we correctly assess someone’s correct personality traits only 20% of the time, and even then we can get only a few kinds of traits close to right.” Personal biases, even judging the gender and name of an applicant from their resume, are a huge systemic issue. Anonymizing resumes is an important part of impartial judgment. It’s not necessarily representative. There are hundreds of services available online for users to get their resumes polished up for submission, and that means the resumes you get aren’t reflective of the skills of the individual, but the skills of the people helping them format it. A well-organized resume could come from a highly disorganized person and you’d have no way to know. A good modern applicant tracking system can handle a lot of cursory reviews of resumes, as well as resume anonymizing, but they can’t necessarily filter you down to the single best candidate. You’ll need to spend time and judgment on resumes no matter how you handle the process. 2. Reference Interviews Ask anyone if they can ever recall having their references contacted as part of a job application , and you’re likely to get a resounding no. It’s surprisingly rare for companies to reach out and contact references for their candidates. Yet, in a time when it’s increasingly difficult to get a feel for a candidate through standard interviews, contacting references can be a valuable tool. The truth is, references are commonly checked, but it’s not common for those references to then mention that fact to the candidate. According to The Balance Careers , 92% of employers conduct background checks that include talking with references. The higher level the position, the more likely they are to contact at least three references. When interviewing references, you want to get a feel for who you’re talking to and what their relationship is with the candidate. It’s very different interviewing a former boss and interviewing a childhood friend. Who the candidate chooses as references can be telling as well. Ask the right questions when interviewing references. Whenever possible, go into detail about how the candidate performed at their previous job, why they left the company, and how their previous role relates to the open position. Ask if they encountered problems with the candidate, and how those problems were resolved. Ask how the candidate responded to feedback when it was given. If the reference is a former boss, ask if they would hire the candidate again. All of this can give you a good insight into the candidate’s ability to perform in their role. 3. Online Skills Testing If you’re filtering your candidates based solely on their resumes, you might be missing out on skilled candidates with talent that wasn’t necessarily represented well in their resume. References may be biased in their analysis. Neither gives you a hands-on look at how the candidate performs in their given role. To that end, we turn to more modern technology: online skills testing. Skills tests are practical tests that challenge the candidate to perform tasks relevant to their intended role, and allow you to grade them based on that performance. For example, a developer role might have a coding skills test that challenges the candidate to complete a handful of coding tasks, so you can see how they work. Some companies that provide skills tests include: eSkill’s Talent Assessment Platform SkillRobo’s Testing Library Interview Mocha’s Test Bank Test Up’s Knowledge Tests These skills tests do have some drawbacks. For one thing, most skills tests are focused on technical roles, like development and coding. Other positions, like managerial roles, HR, sales, and support, are harder to test for in a codified environment. Additionally, a skills testing platform will cost money, which adds to the overall expense of recruiting. Setting up this system and integrating it into your hiring process can be a hassle, so it’s not always right for everyone and every role. 4. Paid Trial Projects Another option you can use is to hire candidates part-time or as a contract worker to start. Paying a candidate for a project where you can see everything from how they work with your team to how they complete their objectives gives you an excellent idea of how they can work within your organization. This isn’t a great screening option for roles where you have hundreds or thousands of applicants to sort through. You won’t be paying each and every one of them for a test project. Instead, it works in conjunction with screening your job candidates remotely. Once you’ve narrowed your field down to the top five or so candidates, you can pay them for work and see how they fit. Trial periods are a good option to give potential employees a chance to prove themselves in a real environment. Some candidates may balk at the idea of working for a month with no guarantee of ongoing employment, but others will take the chance to show their skills and work with your team to impress you. Depending on the situation, you may need to be flexible with a trial project. For example, if a candidate is waiting for a job offer before leaving their current job, they can’t very well work for you for eight hours a day without their current employer punishing them. Make your projects task-oriented, not time-based, so they can be completed outside of your regular business hours. You should also strive to make the task meaningful, rather than busywork that will have no impact on your company. If you’re hesitant to bring on what is essentially a short-term contractor for security reasons, you may consider setting up an NDA for these trial periods. You don’t need to throw open your doors and let every candidate access your internal network just for the application process, after all. Make sure you’re compensating your candidates for the time and work they put in. Paid work is always more enticing than unpaid labor, which turns off many of the best candidates. Otherwise, it’s just an internship, and unpaid internships can have a whole host of their own problems. 5. Online Research A traditional background check can tell you a lot about a candidate. A resume can give you an idea of their relevant skills. Speaking with their references can help you understand their work ethic and their history. Interviews can give you an impression of how they act on a good day. There’s just one problem. All of this is chosen and presented by the candidate. Obviously, they’re going to put their best foot forward. The thing is, nobody is at their best every single day. Some people look better on paper than they are in reality, and some people are extremely disingenuous. It’s always a good idea to look for warning signs of a candidate who is more – and less – than they appear. One option modern employers have is to look up the candidate online. In this age of blogs, social media profiles, and public comments, everyone leaves a trail. Modern trends indicate that 90% of employers look up applicant social media profiles and activity as part of the hiring process, and 54% of employers have eliminated a candidate based on their activity. So, look them up. You have their name and enough information from their resume to differentiate them from other people with the same name. Google their name and see what comes up. Check out Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other public activity. What should you look for? Any warning sign that might turn you off. Inappropriate photos, posting about drug or alcohol abuse, discrimination or racism, slander, bad-mouthing your company (or a previous company); there are many reasons you might consider. Some companies have even rejected candidates because their screen name was inappropriate. You’re free to make the decision based on anything you want, so long as it’s not a protected part of their demographics. Conclusion Regardless of how you choose to screen your employees remotely, you need to pick candidates with the right mixture of skills, experience, and personality to work as part of your team. Getting the right hires is more important than ever, and wading through the sea of underqualified applicants always takes time. It’s better to spend than time than to deal with turnover. Screening job candidates remotely is a vital and nuanced process, especially in the current global landscape where remote work has become the norm for many companies.  Each method has its strengths and potential pitfalls, and it’s crucial for employers to use a combination that suits their specific needs. By investing time and resources into a thorough screening process, employers can ensure they select candidates who are not only skilled and experienced but also fit well within their company culture.  If you need help hiring excellent teammates to grow your business, contact us today . We help companies just like you hire the employees they need to get to the next level.

When it comes to interviewing candidates for a position, all too often the final determination comes down not to objective facts, but to gut feelings and impressions left by the interview. This leads to candidates who might be charismatic and charming but underperform at their job when technical tasks and computers – which can’t be charmed – come into play. More than that, gut feelings can often involve internal biases that even the interviewer is unaware of. Maybe the interviewer has had a bad experience with a brunette woman in the past and now feels less good about hiring another brunette, even though there’s no conscious thought behind it. This kind of systemic bias can be minimized or even eliminated with the use of an interview scorecard template. What Is an Interview Scorecard? So what is an interview scorecard? In short, it’s a form that each interviewer fills out for each candidate, with objective (and potentially subjective) categories that are then rated on a numeric scale. Let’s say that you have three interviewers performing each interview. A scorecard is given to each of them, and a fresh card is used for each new candidate as they are interviewed. Thus, for each candidate, there are three sets of data points that you can then use to rate and rank each candidate. Interview scorecards are generally a spreadsheet with four columns . The first column is the category of information. The second category is a summary of what you’re looking for as an answer from the candidate. The third category is a summary of the candidate’s response to the question. The fourth category is a numerical rating, typically on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10, depending on how many candidates you have and how granular you want to make the rating process. The numerical rating is a measurement of how well the candidate fits the role you’re looking for. As such, an interview scorecard will differ for each different position you’re hiring for. A scorecard for a middle manager in your finances department will look dramatically different than one for an IT worker or a C-level. What Categories Your Scorecard Should Include As we just mentioned, the different categories you include in your scorecard will vary based on the position. However, some broad categories are the same across different scorecards. Here’s a general overview of what you might expect. Job Title: This scorecard entry will have the specific job title you’re hiring for, and will ask the candidate what previous job titles they’ve held that qualify them to hold this one. Someone who has held the same job title in the past will get a higher score than someone with a merely related job title, or a job title a tier lower than this one. For example, if you’re looking to hire an IT Manager , someone who has been an IT Manager in the past would get a 5/5, someone who has been an IT Supervisor might get a 4/5, and someone who has been an IT Administrator might get a 3/5. Someone with IT experience but no role beyond worker might get a 2/5, and someone with no previous IT experience in a formal work setting might get a 1/5. Deliverables: This category includes the main tasks a person in your open role will be asked to complete and deliver on time. This can be anything from “digital assets” to “financial reports” to “employee satisfaction” and is highly customized to the role. Here, the candidate would be asked if they’ve delivered these kinds of things before, and how familiar they are with doing so. Long-term Goals: This category talks about what the person in your role will be asked to do long-term, not as short-term deliverables. This can include things like “redesign our company website” or “audit our financial situation” or “manage employee satisfaction to achieve an overall increase in production.” Many resume items will cite past experience with long term achievements in this vein and is a good way to ask candidates about that experience. Tools, Techniques, Programs: This category is focused on the tools and techniques the candidate will be asked to use in their role. Things like proprietary software, industry software, or specific tools should go here. A machining expert should have experience with CAD software and a CNC machine, an MRI tech should be familiar with MRI machines and control software, and a web developer should be experienced with platforms like WordPress or languages like HTML5 and CSS. Experience: This is a more free-form category where you work with your team to come up with signs of past experience that would be beneficial. For example, if you are hiring a web developer, you might want to ask them for any previous projects where they’ve completed a website redesign, designed a new site from the ground up, or improve an existing site. Marketers might be asked about their profits and growth over a year. Benchmarks go here. Portfolio: This isn’t relevant to every position, but where it’s relevant, it’s hugely important. When hiring for a creative role, the best candidates have relevant portfolios to show off. Less ideal candidates may have portfolios that show off relevant technical skills but not the specific kind of project, while poor candidates have no portfolio to show off at all. Character Traits:  This category focuses on interviewer impressions of the candidate. You will want to confer with your hiring team to develop a list of traits that you find desirable in your candidates. It might include things like creativity, adherence to guidelines, problem-solving ability, self-motivation, time management skills, and so on. Work with your hiring team to develop questions to ask that will showcase these skills, and note down your impressions of what the candidate has or lacks. Work Style:  This is another subjective category. You should use this category to judge how the candidate typically works. Are they a lone wolf and work best on their own? Are they a team participant, working best as part of a greater machine? Are they a rockstar, able to produce stellar results but with their quirks that make their actions difficult to follow? Do they leave tasks for the last minute, or push to get them done as soon as possible? Career Desires:  This category asks you to develop an idea of what you want the candidate to do. Sometimes you may be hiring a candidate for a single project, and plan to release them when the project is complete. Sometimes you may have an open role on an ongoing basis, and don’t plan to give the candidate room for advancement. Sometimes the opposite is true; you want to use the role to get the feel for a candidate and how they would perform if they were promoted above that station. This category should try to match the candidate to your desired path. If the candidate is just looking for a stable role and has no plans to try to work their way up the corporate ladder, that can still be fine, as long as you aren’t expecting more out of them. Soft Skills: Soft skills are skills that are important to a role, but are harder to test for. Instead of something like “proficiency with CSS” for a web developer, it might be “communication” or “collaboration.” You’re looking for skills that make a candidate work best in a role. Communication is a good soft skill for any candidate. Collaboration is a good skill for those who will be part of a larger team or who will have to work with other teams throughout your organization. Time management can be important for roles where the main deliverables come in at a quarterly rate, rather than daily. Self-motivation can be important for those who will work from home or without much supervision. Again, work with your team to develop the specific skills you want to look for here. Culture Fit:  Some companies pride themselves on particular aspects of their company culture . It might be political bias. It might be a level of comfort with coworkers, or a level of sociability. It might be a certain kind of sense of humor. This is one of the more subjective categories, and it’s also difficult to look for in an interview where the candidate is likely both nervous and trying to show their best impression, rather than how they will perform their day-to-day activities. Remember, though, that some categories are protected, and you can’t ask about them in an interview or make a hiring decision based on them. Areas of Concern: This category is one you can develop with your team to look for particularly important red flags that could disqualify a candidate. We don’t mean something like “doesn’t have the relevant skills”, as that is covered by other categories. This is more things like “fails to dress appropriately for an interview” or “was fired from their previous job for unexplained reasons”. You know; things that would mean you’d have to watch the employee more than normal, or have cause to distrust them. Potential Strengths: This category is the opposite of the previous category. Is there anything about the candidate that doesn’t fit in another category, but which stands as a benefit to them? Most candidates should have nothing to add to this category (if you’ve developed your other categories properly). Someone that does might have specific industry awards or accolades, a recommendation from someone you trust, or another strength going for them. Using an Interview Scorecard Template The ideal way to use an interview scorecard template is to start one for each candidate when you decide to give them an initial interview. You should also have a team of interviewers, either all working together for each interview or running different stages of the interview process. For example, you might start a scorecard with an in-person or phone interview conducted by a single hiring manager. This manager fills out the card based on the phone interview. Then, each candidate that makes it through this screening interview to an in-person interview (or a second phone interview) will have their card passed to another hiring manager for a second look. This manager makes additional notes and gives their own numeric impressions. In-person interviews should have 1-3 hiring managers, or 1-2 hiring managers and a relevant manager for the position the candidate will be applying for. In the case of a role-specific manager, they might not know what to ask for hiring questions in general, but they will have a much better grasp of the techniques and technical requirements needed from each candidate and can note strengths and weaknesses than an HR employee might miss. At the end of the hiring process, the scores from each manager can be tallied up, and any extraneous notes about special accolades, strengths, or red flags can be noted. With the data before you, you can make a decision to hire any particular candidate. Templates You can find templates for scorecards in a few places online. One example is on HBR here . Another can be found on Orion Talent’s site (formerly Accolo) here . Other templates can be found on sites like Smartsheet here .

Hiring managers, HR departments, and anyone in charge of recruiting need to be aware of salary history requests, and the bans of those requests that may exist in your areas. Why would you want to request the salary history for a candidate? For decades, this was a common practice among businesses and hiring managers. By asking a new candidate what their salary has been at their previous jobs, you can take that information into account when negotiating. For some, the goal of asking for a salary history is to allow you to form an opinion on what to pay a new hire based on their past compensation. You might be able to pay them less than you otherwise would offer if you know even a low offer is higher than their past roles and will be attractive to them. Conversely, you might recognize that a lower offer could be insulting to a good candidate who has a higher salary history. Unfortunately, salary history has been used to justify a lot of bad practices throughout the employment industry. For example: People have used salary history to eliminate candidates with low salaries, under the assumption that if they were truly skilled, they would have been earning more. People have used salary history to eliminate candidates with high salaries because they’re “too expensive” even if that candidate might be willing to take the pay cut. People use salary histories to exacerbate ongoing gender pay discrimination. It’s illegal to pay people differently based on their gender, but if they have been paid differently in the past and you use salary history to justify it, it becomes legal. Salary history bans are slowly passing throughout the country. Some are city-level, but most are state-level bans. It’s important to know the states that prohibit employers from requesting salary History, so you don’t get your company in trouble with the Department of Labor. What a Salary History Ban Includes  So when a law exists that prohibits asking about salary history , what exactly does that mean? Well, the exact specifics of it will vary depending on the wording of the legislation that the state passed, but here’s a general summary. You cannot ask about salary history or benefits for current or past jobs. You cannot ask for this information before, during, or after the hiring process . You cannot ask for this information directly, or indirectly through an application process or screener quiz. You cannot ask for the information from agents other than the applicant, such as their coworkers, their former employers, or their family. You cannot search for public records or databases for the applicant’s salary history. Note that this last point does not prohibit researching salary based on role . You can gather information about what a role usually pays, and what that role pays in your geographic location, you just cannot research specific information about what a candidate in that role has earned. All of this is aimed at making salary negotiations a fair process for all candidates and hiring managers. You’re meant to be making compensation decisions based on your own company’s resources and the skills of the candidate, not on what you can get away with. The List of States That Prohibit Employers From Requesting Salary History There are quite a few states that ban requesting salary history, so we’re going to run down the list and note anything out of the ordinary for any given state. This information is constantly changing, so you may want to double-check.  Alabama – Effective as of September 2019. Alabama does not ban requesting salary history, but they ban making decisions based on that information, or on refusing to provide that information. California – Effective as of January 2018. California bans requesting salary history. If the applicant discloses their salary history on their own, that information cannot be used to make a hiring decision.  Moreover, California requires that employers give candidates pay scale information if they request it. California – San Francisco – San Francisco has its own law, effective as of July 2018. It bans employers from asking for salary history and from using past salary information to determine compensation for a candidate. Additionally, employers are banned from disclosing their current and former employees’ salary information without their consent. Connecticut – Effective as of January 2019. This ban prohibits employers, as well as LLCs, partnerships, voluntary associations, and other organizations, from asking about salary history. Salary history may still be voluntarily disclosed, and the law does not prohibit making use of that information when it is freely given. Delaware – Effective as of December 2017. All employers, and agents of employers, are prohibited from screening candidates based on salary history. The ban also prohibits asking about salary history.  However, employers may ask for a salary history to confirm information after an offer is already extended to the candidate. District of Columbia – The D.C. area has its own laws, in this case explicitly for the government agencies there. Effective since November 2017, D.C. agencies are prohibited from requesting salary history from candidates. Candidates are allowed to bring it up themselves after an offer is extended, however. Georgia – Atlanta – The only applicable law in Georgia is a city law for Atlanta. Effective as of February 2019, this law affects city agencies, but not private employers. It prohibits city agencies from asking for salary history in screenings, verbal interviews, or applications. Hawaii – Effective as of January 2019. This broad ban on salary history prohibits employers from asking about the topic. Employers are allowed to use the information if the candidate volunteers it, though. Illinois v.1 – The state of Illinois has three different bans in effect. The first, effective as of January 2019, prohibits state agencies from asking about salary history. It’s unclear whether or not this a law, however, as it was only an announcement made by the governor, not legislation passed by the state government. Illinois v.2 – The second of the Illinois bans is an actual ban affecting all employers in the state, effective as of September 2019. Employers are not allowed to ask for salary history or benefits information.  Employers are allowed to ask about salary exceptions from the candidate , however. Illinois – Chicago – The third ban in Illinois is the oldest, effective as of April 2018, and it’s a ban in the City of Chicago. It prohibits city agencies and departments from asking for salary history. Kentucky – Louisville – The city of Louisville has the only salary history ban in the state of Kentucky. The ban has been in effect since May 2018. It prohibits the city government and city agencies from asking for salary history but does not ban private employers from asking. Louisiana – New Orleans – New Orleans has two bans in effect. The first, in effect since January 2017, prohibits city departments from asking for salary history. The second, in effect since October 2019, prohibits the city from asking for pay history, screening based on compensation or benefits, relying on pay history to determine wages, or using salary history to determine an offer. Applicants are allowed to offer salary history after an offer is made, in order to negotiate a higher salary. Maine – The state of Maine has a ban in effect since September 2019. This ban affects all employers. Employers are banned from seeking salary history information until after a job offer has been extended and negotiated. Maryland – Montgomery County – This ban applies solely to the County government and has been in effect since August of 2019. Specifically, the county is banned from seeking or using salary history. It also bans using salary history information or the refusal to provide that information as part of determining a candidate’s eligibility. The county is, however, allowed to use voluntarily disclosed information, but only to offer a higher wage than initially offered, and only if this does not create a gender pay gap. Massachusetts – Effective as of July 2018. All employers, including state and city agencies, are prohibited from asking for salary history information. If information is voluntarily provided, the employer can verify that information, but only if an offer has been extended. Previous salary information cannot be used as a defense to a pay discrimination claim if known. Mississippi – Jackson – Effective as of June 2019, Jackson employers may not ask for salary history information. Missouri – Kansas City – The city of Kansas City has had a ban in place since July of 2018 which prohibits city agencies from asking for pay history until after a candidate has been hired at an agreed-upon salary. Additionally, since October of 2019, all employers with six or more employees are prohibited from asking for salary history, or using that information to determine whether or not to extend an offer.  Employers may, however, ask for the candidate’s expectations of salary and benefits. The ban likewise does not apply to voluntarily offered information. Missouri – St. Louis – The ban in St. Louis is in effect as of March 2020. It prohibits city agencies and departments from requesting salary history information. It also bans retaliation against applicants who refuse to disclose their salary history. New Jersey – State-wide bans in New Jersey have been in effect since February 2018 and January 2020. The older ban prohibits state entities from asking for salary history information or investigating it themselves. The more recent ban applies to all employers in the state. It prohibits screening salary history, using past compensation as minimum or maximum application requirements, or otherwise obtaining that information. If a candidate volunteers the information, the employer may verify it and use it to determine compensation. The employer may also request the information after an offer has been made. New York – The state of New York has several bans in effect. The first has been in effect since January 2017 and prohibits a selection of corporations, public authorities, and state agencies from asking about or using salary history information until after an offer is made. The second, effective as of January 2020, prohibits all employers from seeking salary history information. They may confirm such information after an offer is made. New York – New York City – The NYC ban has been in place since October 2017. It applies to all employers and their agents and bans requesting salary history information. New York – County Bans – Several counties have bans in place as well. Albany county prohibits salary history requests since December 2017. Suffolk County bans it since June 2019. Westchester County bans it since July 2018. North Carolina – Effective since April 2019, North Carolina prohibits state agencies from requesting salary history information. Oregon – Effective since October 2017, Oregon businesses employing more than one employee are prohibited from asking for salary history information until after an offer is made. Pennsylvania – The state of Pennsylvania has a prohibition in place since September 2018 that bans state agencies from asking for salary history, and requires that job postings disclose pay scale and pay ranges. Pennsylvania – Pittsburgh – The city of Pittsburgh has prohibited the city agencies from asking for salary information since January 2017. South Carolina – Columbia – The city of Columbia has prohibited the city’s agencies from asking for or using salary history as part of the employment process since August 2019. South Carolina – Richland County – This county prohibition has been in effect since May 2019 and bans asking for salary history in applications, screenings, or interviews. Utah – Salt Lake City – This ban has been in effect since March 2018 and prohibits the Salt Lake City Corporation from asking for salary history. Vermont – In effect since July 2018, all employers in the state are prohibited from asking for salary history information. Virginia – In effect since July 2019, all state agencies are changing to a new application that does not ask for salary history. Washington – The state of Washington has prohibited all employers from asking for salary history since July 2019. However, if the information is offered, the employer may confirm it. Additionally, for employers with over 15 employees, upon extending an offer to a candidate , the employer must provide the minimum salary information for the position to the candidate. Upcoming Bans The following set of states do not, as of this writing, have laws banning requesting salary information in effect. However, the applicable laws have been passed, the bans just have not yet taken effect. Colorado – The Colorado law does not go into effect until January 2021. This ban prohibits employers from asking about salary history, or from using salary history to make hiring or pay decisions. It also prohibits employers from discriminating against candidates who do not disclose their pay history. Ohio – Cincinnati – The city of Cincinnati has a law that will take effect near the end of March or April 2020. It prohibits employers with 15 or more employees within the city, except for the government, from asking for salary history information. Ohio – Toledo – Another Ohio city, Toledo has the same 15+ employee ban as Cincinnati, only it won’t take effect until the end of June 2020. Pennsylvania – Philadelphia – Philadelphia’s upcoming ban does not yet have an effective date. Legal challenges to the ban have kept it from taking effect until a court ruling in February of 2020. Bans on “Bans” In a reversal of all of the above, a few states have salary history ban bans. What this means is that employers are not just allowed to request salary history and use it as they see fit, but city governments cannot ban the practice within their jurisdictions in contradiction to the state laws. Michigan – The state of Michigan prohibits city or county governments from instituting salary history bans. Specifically, local governments may not regulate what information employers can ask for or exclude as part of the application and interview process. However, state departments may not ask for salary history until after an offer is extended. This includes asking prior employers or checking public records for that information. Wisconsin – Like Michigan, the state of Wisconsin has prohibited local governments from instituting bans on employers seeking salary history. Conclusion That’s all for now. Stay tuned; as you can see from the dates, these laws have been implemented only in the last few years, so expect more to hit the books in the next few years as well. With many states enacting bans to promote fairer hiring practices and combat wage discrimination, understanding these laws is crucial for maintaining compliance and fostering an equitable workplace. If you’re navigating the complexities of these regulations, or simply want to ensure your hiring practices are up-to-date and lawful, we’re here to help.  Contact our team today for personalized guidance tailored to your organization’s needs. Let’s work together to create a more transparent and fair hiring process.

Do your recruiters and hiring managers know the first rule of hiring? The law assumes that everything asked during job interviews will be used to make hiring decisions. Every interview question should be prepared with that in mind, and limited only to issues required to assess a candidate’s qualifications for the open position. Always avoid illegal, insulting, and irrelevant questions that don’t pertain to job performance and learn how to use legal interview questions. If you want to get caught in the hot seat and have a laser spotlight on your company (not in a good way), ask questions during recruiting like the NFL asked of University of Colorado football player Nick Kasa: “Do you like girls?” Otherwise, you need to conduct employment interviews without asking illegal interview questions. That means planning legal interview questions about information related to job performance and avoiding questions about information that can lead to bias in hiring. Plan and Prepare Legal Interview Questions  Don’t go into an employment interview without planning or try to “wing it.” That’s a recipe for illegal interview questioning. Plan the interview by scheduling a time and good location for it and preparing written legal interview questions about the essential skills and qualifications required for the opening. Don’t deviate from prepared questions, and have a worksheet during the interview to note answers and any questions the candidate may ask. Make sure hiring managers and others who are involved in employment interviews are trained in fair hiring practices, and develop a written interview process to ensure no one conducts interviews without proper preparation. Laws About Discrimination The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ( EEOC ) enforces laws that make it illegal to discriminate against protected categories of candidates. Those include age, race, color, creed, national origin, gender, disability, and genetic characteristics. Other categories protected under state law may include sexual orientation and marital status. Specific laws against discrimination in employment include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Avoiding illegal interview questions means not asking for information in these areas. The interview process is a pre-hire activity and anything asked in the recruiting process suggests that hiring decisions will be made based on the information uncovered from it. Asking candidates about things like their age, religious practices, or marital status gives the impression that the hiring decision will be based on the candidate’s answers, leading to legal liability. Legal Versus Illegal Interview Questions If you’re not totally clear about legal interview questions and illegal interview questions, you’re not alone. CareerBuilder found that one in five employers asks illegal interview questions unknowingly, and at least one third of hiring managers couldn’t tell if interview questions were legal or illegal. A good guide to use when interviewing is to use only questions that demonstrate job-related necessity for asking them, and do not use questions that could be used to screen out minorities or members of one sex. While the EEOC has guidelines for employers regarding what they can ask legally about criminal records, there are many other areas that are off-limits during employment interviews. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reminds employers that even harmless intentions with illegal interview questions can lead to risk of legal action if candidates feel interview questions discriminate against them. Focus on Job Relevance Legal interview questions focus on job relevance, asking about a candidate’s ability to perform essential functions of the job. Ask questions about the candidate and don’t make statements that involve assumptions about a candidate’s abilities. Focus on asking about ability to perform required functions, such as “This job requires traveling to client sites out of town every month. Are you able to travel for work?” Take care not to make assumptions or statements about visible disabilities such as wheelchairs or mobility impairments while asking about ability to perform job functions. “How long have you been in a wheelchair?” or “What happened to cause your disability?” are not legal interview questions. Guidelines for Legal and Illegal Interview Questions It’s important to avoid questions during a job interview that can lead to bias in hiring and focus on questions about job performance. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission outlines the guidelines for legal interview questions under Federal Law. Use a Consistent Interview Process Carefully planning questions and using the same structured interview process for all candidates will help ensure equal treatment of all candidates and avoid illegal interview questions. Focus on job requirements and candidate performance and abilities for fair hiring practices and legal compliance. Conclusion Mastering the art of interviewing is more than just understanding the legal intricacies—it’s about curating a comprehensive experience that respects both the candidate and the standards set by law. In this rapidly changing professional landscape, the ability to conduct a fair, unbiased, and effective interview can be a game-changer for organizations. It not only ensures a compliant hiring process but also solidifies a company’s reputation as an ethical, forward-thinking employer.  By focusing on job relevance, preparing in advance, and continually educating ourselves on the ever-evolving legal framework, we can pave the way for a more inclusive, efficient, and successful recruitment process. Remember, every interview is not just an assessment of a potential employee but also a reflection of the company’s values, ethics, and commitment to excellence. Need help hiring? Reach out to us and learn how we can tailor our staffing services to suit your unique needs. #InterviewQuestions #LegalInterviewQuestions

Employees are a company’s most valuable asset regardless of the industry. Hiring requires a thorough process, with interviewing being pivotal. This entails not just asking the right questions but ensuring you deeply understand candidates to make informed decisions. Great interviewers excel in this. If you want your company to have a competitive advantage, then you should read this blog post to ensure that you embody the qualities of good interviewers on your team to hire the best employees. Characteristics of an Effective Interviewer Great interviewers possess several distinct qualities. They should embody and represent the company’s culture and brand. Their approach should be marked by empathy and active listening, allowing them to understand candidates beyond just their spoken responses, tapping into underlying motivations and concerns.  Clarity in posing questions is pivotal, but it’s equally crucial for interviewers to offer feedback and ensure the candidate comprehends the company’s values and aspirations.  A hallmark of professionalism is preparedness, demonstrated by a deep familiarity with the candidate’s profile and the specifics of the job role. Exceptional interviewers are also acutely aware of their personal biases and take conscious steps to ensure these do not skew their hiring decisions.  Furthermore, the unpredictable nature of interviews necessitates adaptability, with the best interviewers being capable of steering the conversation productively, even when it veers off course. Notably, companies like Google prioritize adaptability and preparedness in their hiring processes. Also, according to LinkedIn , a bad interview experience can deter 83% of candidates from a once-favored company. Interview Preparation Checklist: Understand the job description deeply. Know what the team and manager expect. Engage with the hiring manager. Identify qualities of top performers in the role and factors leading to success. Screen top candidates through resumes and initial phone interviews to gauge fit and enthusiasm. Craft and practice open-ended and behavioral interview questions. Plan the interview: Secure a conducive interview environment, arrange company tours, and facilitate introductions to potential colleagues. Implementing these steps ensures better hiring decisions. Your company’s success hinges on it. Practical Steps for Being a Good Interviewer Becoming a competent interviewer isn’t just about asking the right questions, but it’s about creating an environment in which your interviewee can provide genuine and thoughtful answers. For budding interviewers eager to hone their skills, the following practical tips can be invaluable: Preparation is Key: Before the interview, familiarize yourself with the interviewee’s background, work, or any other relevant details. This not only demonstrates respect but also enables you to ask deeper, more insightful questions. Establish Rapport: Start with some light conversation to make the interviewee comfortable. This can help alleviate nerves and set a positive tone for the remainder of the discussion. Listen Actively: The art of interviewing is as much about listening as it is about asking. Nodding, maintaining eye contact, and providing verbal cues such as “I see” or “Go on” show the interviewee you’re engaged and interested. Avoid Interrupting: Allow the interviewee to complete their thoughts. Not only is interrupting rude, but it might also cause you to miss out on valuable insights. Open-Ended Questions: Frame your questions in a way that encourages detailed answers, rather than simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses. For instance, ask “How did that experience make you feel?” instead of “Was that a challenging experience?” Stay Neutral: Ensure that you remain impartial, especially if the topic is controversial. Your role is to facilitate the conversation, not to impose your opinions. Be Adaptable: Sometimes, the most interesting information comes from unexpected answers. If the conversation takes an unforeseen direction that’s still relevant, be flexible enough to pursue it. Maintain Confidentiality: If an interviewee shares sensitive information and asks for discretion, honor that request. Trust is crucial in this relationship. Practice Reflective Listening: This involves repeating or paraphrasing what the interviewee has just said. It not only demonstrates that you’re paying attention but also provides clarity and allows the interviewee to correct or expand on their statement. Conclude Gracefully: Always end the interview on a positive note, thanking the interviewee for their time and insights. Give them an idea of the next steps and when they might expect to hear the results or outcomes of the interview. Being an effective interviewer combines the skills of listening, understanding, and guiding a conversation in a way that brings out the best in the interviewee. As with many skills, continuous practice and self-reflection are key to improvement. With these tips in mind, budding interviewers can confidently set forth on their journey to mastery. If you are looking for even more info, we have discussed interviewing in blog posts like “ Selecting the Right Team Member for Interviewing Candidates .” Common Mistakes Made by Interviewers One of the most frequent mistakes made by interviewers is being unprepared. Going into an interview without adequate research or a clear set of questions can detract from professionalism and signal disinterest.  Another misstep is the tendency to dominate the conversation or talk excessively about oneself, which can overshadow the main objective: to learn about the interviewee. Relying too heavily on closed-ended questions that garner merely ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers can hinder deeper insights. It’s equally vital to maintain a neutral demeanor, as visible disapproval or overt surprise can inhibit open dialogue. Venturing too deeply into personal topics not pertinent to the discussion can be uncomfortable for the interviewee, and it’s essential to strike a balance between rapport-building and discretion.  Furthermore, failing to take notes or allowing distractions such as multitasking during the interview can communicate a lack of engagement. Interviewers should avoid leading questions that suggest they’re seeking a specific answer, as it might skew genuine responses.  Biases, both conscious and unconscious, can greatly influence the direction and outcome of an interview, so it’s critical to be aware of and counteract them. Lastly, neglecting to provide feedback after the session can leave the interviewee in unnecessary suspense and uncertainty. Guidelines for a Smooth and Unbiased Interview Having a structured framework is crucial when conducting interviews. A clear plan, complete with topics or questions, ensures that the session is comprehensive and focused. The environment also plays a significant role; a neutral, distraction-free setting can put the interviewee at ease and foster a more genuine conversation.  For fairness and comparability, especially when interviewing multiple candidates or subjects, it’s essential to maintain a consistent line of questioning. Approaching each session with an open mind, devoid of preconceived notions, facilitates an unbiased exchange.  Active listening, where the interviewer is fully present, reflecting on the responses and posing follow-up questions, can deepen understanding. If an answer is ambiguous, interviewers should seek clarification rather than making assumptions. Double-barreled questions, which touch on more than one issue simultaneously, should be avoided to prevent confusion.  After the interview, seeking feedback about the process can be invaluable in refining techniques and addressing areas of improvement. It’s a good practice for interviewers to continuously update their skills, be it through workshops, reading, or feedback from peers. Concluding the process with post-interview communication, informing the interviewee of the outcome or next steps, exemplifies respect and professionalism. How to Leverage Technology When Conducting Interviews In our rapidly evolving digital age, technology offers a myriad of tools and platforms that can significantly enhance the interview process. Leveraging these resources can streamline interactions, deepen insights, and improve overall efficiency. Gone are the days when geographical boundaries limited interactions. With video conferencing tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Skype, interviewers can connect with candidates from across the globe. These platforms often come with features such as screen sharing, which can be invaluable when discussing portfolios, presentations, or specific online resources. Coordinating schedules can be a time-consuming endeavor. Tools like Calendly or Tidy Cal integrate with calendars to automatically identify mutual availability, reducing back-and-forth emails and potential time zone confusion. For roles that require technical proficiency, platforms like Codility or HackerRank allow candidates to demonstrate their skills in real-time. This hands-on approach can be more revealing than a mere discussion of qualifications. With the interviewee’s consent, sessions can be recorded for later review. Platforms like Otter.ai can then transcribe these recordings, ensuring that no detail is overlooked and allowing for more in-depth analysis post-interview. Tools such as Trello or Slack can facilitate discussion among interview panel members. This ensures a collective decision-making process, with inputs from various team members contributing to a holistic evaluation. Platforms like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms can be used post-interview to collect feedback from candidates about their experience. This feedback can provide insights into the interview process’s effectiveness and areas for potential improvement. For specific roles, especially in design or architecture, VR and AR can enable candidates to showcase their work in a more immersive environment, offering interviewers a deeper understanding of their capabilities. Once a candidate is selected, technology can also assist in the onboarding process. Platforms can now streamline paperwork, training, and integration, ensuring a smooth transition for the new hire . Technology, when utilized effectively, can revolutionize the interview process. It not only simplifies logistics but also provides richer, more comprehensive insights into candidates’ skills, experiences, and potential fit within an organization. As technology continues to advance, it’s essential for interviewers to stay updated and adapt to harness its full potential. The landscape of work has undergone a significant shift with the proliferation of remote positions , a trend supercharged by the global Covid-19 pandemic. This transition has ushered in a new set of challenges and best practices for conducting interviews. Interviewers must now account for time zones, potential technological hiccups, and the ability to gauge a candidate’s suitability for remote roles.  Effective remote interviewing requires a keen understanding of the digital tools available and the capability to foster a genuine connection even through a screen. Additionally, assessing a candidate’s ability to work independently, manage time effectively, and communicate in a virtual team environment has become paramount. As companies increasingly embrace remote work structures, the aptitude to skillfully navigate remote interviews will be a critical asset for recruiters. In the world of today, technology has firmly anchored itself within the interviewing process, offering new dimensions of evaluation and engagement. Modern interviewers now have a plethora of technological tools at their disposal, reshaping the very fabric of recruitment.  Conclusion Interviewing, in its essence, is more than a mere process of selection—it’s a gateway into the soul of an organization. As we’ve delved into leveraging technology and modern strategies, it’s evident that the journey of an interviewer is akin to that of a craftsman. With each technological tool and nuanced tactic, interviewers sculpt the foundation and future pillars of their organizations, carefully choosing each cornerstone. The tapestry of a company isn’t woven overnight. It’s crafted stitch by stitch, interview by interview, with each candidate adding a unique hue to the ever-evolving mural of the organization. The blend of technology with traditional interviewing methods illustrates how businesses can remain rooted in core values while branching out with innovative strategies. For those at the helm of the hiring process, the challenges are manifold, but the rewards are profound. Each candidate assessed, each technology implemented, and each best practice embraced, serves as a testament to an organization’s commitment to growth, diversity, and excellence. At the intersection of technology and human connection, we stand ready to guide you. Let us assist you in weaving your organizational narrative, ensuring every addition to your team resonates with your company’s ethos and vision. Dive into our suite of offerings, and let’s craft a future that’s both enduring and avant-garde. Want to master the art of interviewing? Elevate your hiring process with our expert insights. Contact our team today , and let us help you in attracting and retaining the best talent for your organization

At first glance, it can seem offensive when a candidate cancels their interview with you. You’re giving them a fantastic opportunity, and all they need to do is attend the interview, yet they call the whole thing off. It leaves you in a tricky position. You now have an open time slot, and the chances of getting someone else in to fill it are pretty slim, especially if it was a day-of cancelation. If you traveled to conduct the interview, it becomes a lot of wasted time and expense. Before you get mad, remove them from your candidate pool, or take any actions, step back and take a deep breath. Chances are, it’s nothing personal. There are many reasons why a candidate may cancel an interview, and the steps you take following such a cancelation say a lot about you and your company. Reasons Why a Candidate Cancels an Interview A candidate will either tell you why they’re canceling the interview or won’t. If they do, you may have an opportunity to bring them back at another time. If they don’t, you may be able to reach out and ask what happened and take it from there. There are many different reasons why a candidate might cancel an interview, or even no-call, no-show the interview. Some are bad, of course, but others are understandable and can be worked around. Knowing the reason why, to the best of your ability, is your first step. Some of the more common reasons why candidates cancel interviews include: A different company hired them first . The best candidates are in high demand, especially in the current candidate-focused job market. If your hiring process is slower than the competition’s, they will be able to get to a candidate first. An accident, medical issue, or family issue prevented the interview . Maybe your candidate was involved in a car crash on the way to the interview, their ailing mother tripped and had to be taken to the emergency room, or a child broke an arm. There are a million different reasons a candidate might have an emergency. They learned something about your company they don’t like . Sometimes, in researching your company, your candidate comes across something they don’t like. Maybe it’s some statement by your CEO. Maybe it’s malpractice on the part of service reps. Maybe it’s an overall reputation thing or a tip from an insider. It may even be a revelation about the salary range you offer. Whatever the case, they changed their mind about working with you. Unavoidable delays prevented them from attending . Maybe your candidate is flying in from out of state, and the airline delays the flight, so they can’t make it in time. Sure, you can say they should have flown out earlier, but that may not be possible, depending on their schedule. They just plain forgot about it . No one is perfect, and we all let things slip our minds. Something as high-priority as a job interview should usually be unforgettable, but sometimes, life is just so stressful things slip through the cracks. Every reason a candidate cancels an interview has a different set of possible responses. The one central tenet is this: don’t get angry. Your response to a canceled interview will reflect on your company. An angry response will likely be circulated on social media and job search portals, earning your company a poor reputation. Gather Information The first thing you want to do is learn why the candidate skipped the interview. Generally, there will be a few kinds of responses. The first, and the worst, is pure ghosting. Sometimes, a candidate has some reason why they’re no longer interested in working for you. Maybe they took another offer, or something happened, and they’re no longer in the market. Whatever the case, they no longer call you, they don’t answer their phone when you call, and they don’t respond to emails. They’ve entirely ghosted you. This is terrible practice on the part of the candidate, but let’s be honest here: how many candidates have you dropped contact with in the course of hiring? For decades, companies have gotten away with simply ignoring anyone who doesn’t make it through the hiring process. Even a courtesy “we’ve selected someone else” email was too much for some businesses. Maybe not yours – perhaps you were good about it! – but many candidates have had bad experiences and don’t feel bad about turning the tables when the power is in their favor. Sometimes, the candidate doesn’t care about burning a bridge. Sometimes, something comes up that gets in the way of contacting you. If your candidate was involved in a car accident and ended up in the hospital for a week before they could speak, well, there’s a justified reason for not contacting you. The important part is, if they reach back out to you, ask them why they weren’t able to let you know at the time. The way they answer will determine what kind of second chance you can give them. The second possibility is that the candidate took another offer and is no longer interested in working for you. This is relatively common in the candidate-focused market right now, and it means you may need to make some changes to your hiring process to capture your candidates better. Sometimes, the candidate will be responsive to communications but doesn’t think to reach out proactively. This can be a strike against them, but it may not mean they’re a terrible candidate. It’s up to you whether or not you keep them in your long-term candidate pool. And, of course, sometimes something comes up , and the candidate will need to reschedule. If they proactively contact you and ask about rescheduling, you can work with them to pick a new time for their interview. Sometimes it hurts, especially if the lost time from the interview is expensive, but if the candidate is good enough, it’s worth it. Take Steps to Reduce Interview Cancelations A single interview cancelation is likely the candidate’s fault and may not be something you can solve. A series of them may indicate a trend in your hiring process that you need to solve. Here are some things you can look into: 1. Reduce your time-to-hire. You may feel helpless if a candidate cancels their interview with you because they accepted another offer. The truth is, this isn’t entirely outside of your control. There are two things you can do. The first is to ask the candidate what offer they received and see if you can beat it. You may not be prepared to offer them a job on the spot, but you may be able to convince them to still interview for it (perhaps under the guise of interview practice or a low-stakes interview) and offer them a better offer when they come in. Not everyone will bite, but some will, and you may be able to poach the candidate from your competition. The second is to examine your hiring process. If competitors are hiring people out from under you when you haven’t even interviewed them yet, it means they started the hiring process earlier than you did (such as if the candidate has been putting out weekly applications for months), or their hiring process is faster than yours. If you can find ways to reduce downtime and increase your hiring speed, you should be able to undercut the competition and reduce canceled interviews. 2. Implement flexible interview systems. Interviewing doesn’t have to be rigid and inflexible. If you set a time and firmly stick to it, your candidate may not feel valued as a candidate. If they need to cancel, they may feel like it’s better to ghost you than try to work with you, especially if you come across as dismissive or put-upon for being asked to reschedule. Sure, it can be a hassle to reschedule interviews multiple times with the same candidate. If your goodwill is being abused, it’s more than reason enough to cut off the candidate. However, you want to be flexible and open to alternatives for good candidates. If nothing else, it shows that your company has a culture of respect for your employees. You may also consider shifting to a more flexible form of interview. Video interviews over Zoom or Skype, asynchronous interviews, phone interviews, and even interviews outside of typical business hours can all be good options for hooking candidates who have scheduling issues otherwise. 3. Ask for honest feedback in the event of a cancelation. When an interview is missed or canceled, it can be worthwhile to send the candidate an email asking them for feedback. Ask honestly, and be prepared for brutally honest feedback. For example, maybe your hiring representative was terse or rude – or just came across as such – which turned off the candidate. You may need to offer that employee more training to avoid such an issue. Another possibility is that your salary range, benefits, or culture don’t work for the candidate, and they only found out after scheduling an interview. It can help if you’re more up-front with that information. A common possibility is that you’re working with a shoddy third-party recruiting agency. That agency may be more interested in earning commissions based on lining up interviews, and less on providing relevant candidates, so the misalignment between candidate expectations and your open role gets in the way. Proceed With Other Interviews Sometimes, a candidate may have a valid reason for needing to cancel or reschedule an interview. Maybe they thought they had another offer on lock, only to lose it at the last minute, or they had a family emergency, and your job offer took second stage. You should remain open to the possibility of still interviewing and potentially hiring the candidate. While some reasons for rescheduling (I forgot!) may be a strike against them, they had enough going for them to make it to the interviews in the first place, after all. And, of course, some things like family emergencies aren’t going to be regular occurrences. At the same time, the world won’t wait for them, and neither should you. The chances are you have more than just one candidate lined up for interviews, and one candidate canceling an interview is not grounds for halting the entire process unless some regulation or law is saying otherwise. You should be open to rescheduling the interview, but if too much time has passed and you’re hiring someone else, the opportunity is gone. The ball is in the candidate’s court for how proactively they reschedule and stay involved in the hiring process. While some reasons a candidate bails on the interview are reasonable and worth overlooking, others are not. A candidate who forgets their interview date, schedules their transportation poorly, or otherwise doesn’t manage their time appropriately may be revealing something about their time management skills that would make them a worse employee than you expected. Always Maintain Respect and Rapport The hiring process is not an impartial, by-the-numbers, algorithmic process, as much as we like to use software and impartial scoring systems to run it. Today, a vital part of the hiring process is building rapport with your candidates. When you have a more casual, closer relationship with your candidates, they will be more communicative and respectful of your time. It will reduce the rate of ghosting and no-call cancelations, and you’ll be more likely to get valuable feedback from them when you ask. The worst thing you can do as an employer looking to hire is reacting strongly and negatively to a cancelation. If a single cancelation puts an employee on a denylist for the future, or if your hiring manager responds angrily to a cancelation, word will get around, and your candidate pool will worsen. Respect is essential, and it goes both ways. Do you have any questions or concerns about how to handle an interview cancelation? If so, please feel free to leave a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started! Reacting appropriately to a situation such as this is critical, so if you would like a little more clarification on the topic, we would be more than happy to assist you however we can!

You can spend all the time you like writing a fancy job description, but when it comes to effectively attracting candidates, you need some hard data. Some of this data will make or break whether or not a given candidate wants to apply to a job. Is the position in a location they’re willing to work at or re-locate to? Does it have specific experience requirements that the majority of candidates don’t have? Some of this data is more optional than other data – the location and type of role are both essential, but one such piece of data might not be. Specifically, we’re talking about putting the salary range in your job description. Including a salary range in your job listings can be beneficial, but it can also be detrimental. You need to make a decision on whether or not you want to list it, and as such, you need to know the pros and cons of both sides. Pro: Some Candidates Won’t Apply if Salary is Missing Employers love to talk about how they hire the best people for a role given culture fit, experience, and skill, not just whoever they can get for the money they’re willing to pay. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people on the job market who believe that if a company isn’t willing to list their salary range, they’re going to under-pay. This isn’t always true – there are a lot of reasons why a company might not list the salary range for a job – but it’s a popular impression amongst job seekers. In particular, a lot of high quality, experienced candidates will avoid applying to jobs that don’t list a salary, because they want to make more than their current role, and they don’t want to waste time applying to jobs where that raise isn’t available. A recent study from Paychex found that a low salary was the #1 reason 70% of respondents cited for leaving a job; if you aren’t listing your salary range, you aren’t attracting people who want more than they currently make. Pro: Many People Value Job Transparency Today In the old days, it was almost taboo to discuss salary and compensation with others, whether it was inside or outside of your organization. These days, discussing salary openly is much more common and accepted, even encouraged. Millennials in particular are very open about their compensation, both to help each other and to hurt companies that try to suppress that information. The idea is that many companies hide salary information because they want to under-pay as much as possible, and by sharing salary information, they can help prevent that from happening . According to Stephanie Penner, a senior partner at consulting firm Mercer: “About 17% of private companies practice pay transparency, while 41% discourage and 25% explicitly prohibit discussion of salary information.” There are plenty of reasons to hide salary information from job listings that have nothing to do with under-paying applicants, but that stigma is going to be at the front of mind for many candidates. Pro: You Can Focus More on Important Candidate Attributes You only have so much time available during an interview. Candidates are always going to want to see the salary range in your job description . So if you haven’t listed it publicly, candidates are going to ask for it in the interview. This sets up for awkward scenarios where you have to use buzzwords or non-specific terms like “available to negotiate once an offer has been made” or “depends on experience”, and worst of all, it takes up time. You would much rather be asking your candidates about their work history and their experience, and leave salary discussions for later. If the candidate already knows roughly the salary range they can expect, they don’t need to ask about it. Pro: Salary Range May Be Available Regardless Let’s be honest here; if you’re hiding salary range, you’re only partially hiding it. Salary range is still available on sites like Glassdoor, and more generally from the Bureau of Labor Statistics . Candidates are going to cross-reference data sources like these to figure out what kind of salary they should expect, regardless of whether or not you list it. In fact, listing your salary publicly can help in cases where the data from these sources is old or not representative of your organization as a whole. Not everyone is going to post their data to Glassdoor, after all; if you’re offering a higher salary than what is publicly listed, it can make your open role appear that much more attractive . Pro: Helps Minimize Bias and Keep Salary Ranges Fair It’s illegal to pay people different amounts of money when the sole difference between them is a protected characteristic, like race, gender, national origin, disability, religion, and so on . When you hide your salary range, it’s harder for other people to keep you accountable to this equal pay, and it’s easier for subconscious biases to come into play when you extend an offer. If you already have a publicly listed salary range, your candidates will expect something within that range, and it will be harder – though not impossible – to fall victim to bias in compensation. Stephanie Bronner from Mercer, a consulting firm, has seen this happen internally as well: “Pay transparency could spark jealousy among employees and reduce the number of staffers a company can hire. Pay transparency is still relatively rare in the private sector” Obviously, we recommend that you have a firm range in mind whether or not you list it publicly, and ignore protected characteristics when making your decision. Otherwise, you open yourself up to lawsuits, and nobody needs that. In broad strokes, that’s more or less it for the benefits of listing a salary range in your job ads. We believe that there are more reasons not to than there are to do it, so here are the downsides to listing salary in your ads. Con: Some Candidates Won’t Apply to Low Salary Positions Virtually everyone, when looking for a job, has money at the forefront of their mind. Many high-quality candidates filter by salary first and will look for other qualities of a role later. What this means is that, if your salary is lower than they would normally want, they won’t look any further, despite advice to the contrary . If you don’t make your salary range public, applicants will be forced to look at and analyze other potential benefits of taking the position. These benefits range from company culture and reputation to benefits packages and can outweigh the purely monetary compensation a lower salary might entail. They may also be able to negotiate upwards and get the best of both worlds, but it’s not something they would think to try if the initial number dissuades them. Con: Existing Employees Might Feel Slighted Keep in mind that the public information you list about your salaries is just that: it’s public. When word gets out that you’re hiring for a position, people who are currently in that position may take a look at the job listing to see what kinds of qualities you’re hiring for. If they see that you’re hiring at a starting salary that is higher than their current salary, they’ll feel very put off. At best, you’ll have to negotiate a raise to keep your existing employees in that role. At worst, they labor in sullen silence while looking for a new job, jumping ship at the first opportunity, and forcing you to go through the hiring process for another new employee, likely at that same new, higher starting salary. Con: It’s Harder to Attract Candidates With More Qualifications As mentioned above, one of the first things many candidates look for in a job listing is the salary information. Salary information is first and foremost in the minds of most job seekers. There are a lot of qualified, excellent candidates who will turn away when they see the salary number they don’t like. This applies both to salary ranges that are too low and too high. After all, if the pay rate is high enough, the candidate might feel like they aren’t qualified to earn it, even if they are. You lose out on a lot of valuable talent. If you leave out the salary range from your job listing, you can attract new candidates based on culture, role, and benefits, and use the salary as yet another benefit added on top of the list once they get around to asking about it. Con: High-End Positions Assume Salary Negotiations One of the biggest reasons to keep salary information secret in the listing is the power and flexibility it gives you in negotiations. In fact, as Liz Ryan writes on Forbes: “Most job ads don’t include a salary range because employers want to keep the salary range private. It gives them a negotiating advantage when they do.” At a certain point, salary has to be tailored to the applicant, their past experience, their skills, and their connections. Low-end, entry-level positions don’t need to worry as much about this, but high-end positions in your management and executive teams need to pay a lot more attention to what the candidate brings to the table. If the candidate has a lot of potential value above and beyond meeting the job requirements, compensating them more makes sense. They’re valuable, so you want to hook them before someone else does. Con: Salaries with Commissions Aren’t Reflective of Total Pay Sometimes, the salary itself doesn’t tell the whole story. There are a lot of positions, in sales in particular, that rely on commissions for full compensation. The base, starting salary of these roles often looks very low when it’s listed, though the potential to earn can vastly outstrip much higher-paying roles. Unfortunately, on job search sites, it’s easy to filter based on salary. Those jobs with low base salaries and commissions just look like jobs with low base salaries and are thus filtered to the bottom of the list. A great, talented sales employee would earn several times the listed salary easily, but they won’t even see the job opening because they aren’t looking at roles with salaries that low. Of course, if your role has a commission structure, that in turn can turn away plenty of candidates. Some people view commission-based roles as excessively cutthroat and vicious, or have had bad experiences with them before, and won’t consider them. That’s simply a reality you have to deal with when you’re hiring for a commission-based position. Con: Negotiations Give You an Advantage Susan Heathfield cuts to the heart of the issue when she says: “Some employers also believe that the first party to supply a number in a salary negotiation is in the weaker negotiating position.” While the goal of hiring someone should be a partnership with mutual benefit to one another, salary negotiations are often adversarial, and the culture of interviews necessitates careful positioning, jockeying for advantage, and feeling out what number range the other side is thinking before they say it. If you offer less than they want, you turn them off and have to fight harder to get a high-quality candidate. If you offer more than they expected, you can hook them much more easily, but you are then left wondering if you’re over-paying. It’s a tricky situation to line up. Con: Deciding on Salary Range Requires Time and Monitoring One of the lesser-known cons to listing a salary range is a question you’ll confront when it comes time to fill it out: what even is a good salary range for that position?  You have to consider the salary range of your existing employees, and the salary range for comparable roles in other companies, both in your location and in other locations across the country. You have to figure out what is a geographical standard, what is an industry-standard, and what is a role standard. Are you paying to much, or offering too little? Keeping track of all of this information requires someone to be monitoring and collating all of that data. You have to cross-reference it with your financial department to make sure you have the budget for an employee in that salary range, all before you can even write a number in your job listing. Now, sure, you need some of that information on hand to make an offer to a qualified candidate. It’s not quite as important, though, because at that point you’re working with an individual, and can come up with a combination of salary and benefits that suits them and your budget more easily. Conclusion Overall, we figure that there are more drawbacks to listing a salary than there are benefits to listing it in your job ad. There’s a reason over half of the companies don’t list salary information, after all. The decision to include a salary range in job descriptions is nuanced and depends heavily on the specific context and goals of the employer. While listing a salary range can attract candidates who prioritize transparency and fair pay, it also comes with potential downsides, such as deterring highly qualified candidates who might perceive the salary as too low or too high.  Additionally, public salary listings can impact current employees’ perceptions and negotiations. Employers must weigh these factors carefully, considering their recruitment strategy, company culture, and the competitive landscape of their industry.  Ultimately, over half of companies choose not to list salary information, suggesting that the cons often outweigh the pros. However, each organization must assess its unique situation to make the most effective decision for its hiring needs. Ready to optimize your hiring strategy? Stay ahead of the curve by understanding the best times to recruit new talent. Interested in refining your recruitment strategy? Contact our team today to start transforming your hiring process today!