4 Steps : Successfully Hire When Multiple Decision Makers are Involved

Many of our clients involve multiple interviewers when trying to decide which candidate to hire. The more interviewers involved, the more complex the decision becomes due to numerous opinions.  Below are 4 steps that you and your team can take to ensure a successful hire.

Step 1: Establish Decision Criteria

Before you interview candidates you and your team need to decide what criteria are the most important for this hire.  Brainstorm to create a list and then rank in order of importance. The criteria can be divided into separate categories.  For instance, you may want to have one set of criteria based on previous experience and another set of criteria based on desired personality traits.   

Step 2: Create a scorecard
Creating a scorecard will ensure that all interviewers will be judging the candidate on the same criteria that you created prior to the interviews.
The scorecard should contain all the criteria and a scale to rank each criterion and a comment section. Each interviewer will rank 1-5 for each criterion and add their comments on why they gave that score.   When the process is completed, making a decision will be much easier since everyone is judging the candidate on the same criteria.

For examples of effective scorecards contact Lou Adler.  Lou offers an excellent system of interviewing candidates.

Step 3: Develop Questions to ask during the Interview Process

Asking questions around criteria that is experienced-based is not as difficult as trying to determine someone’s personality traits. If one of your criteria is that you need someone that has experience negotiating complex contracts, then you ask the candidate for examples that demonstrate their past success in that area.  More difficult is determining if a candidate is a creative problem solver or they are a leadership style.   In these cases, you need to use behavioral or situational style questions.

Here are some sample Behavioral Questions:

Tell me about a time your behavior had a positive impact on your team. (Follow-ups: What was your primary goal and why? How did your teammates respond? Moving forward, what’s your plan?)

Tell me about a time when you effectively managed your team to achieve a goal. What did your approach look like? (Follow-ups: What were your targets and how did you meet them as an individual and as a team? How did you adapt your leadership approach to different individuals? What was the key takeaway from this specific situation?)