Group Interviews-Employer's Edition
With the workplace becoming ever faster employers must consider entrepreneurial methods in managing the human resource functions in much more efficient way. One such method is to research, design and implement a functional group-interview methodology.
The cost and time savings are obvious. In the same time it would take to screen, evaluate, interview, test and determine fit for 10-15 individuals you can have one well planned and executed group interview.
In addition, you can use this first interview as the pre-orientation "orientation", softening the lessons that must be learned in the first few weeks of your new employees time with your organization.
However, badly planned and executed group interviews can be disastrous and can create negativity and bad publicity for your firm, if not handled with extreme care and caution.
Before you make that first call to invite your first interviewee you must determine what your objectives are from this interview. Is it only to screen individuals? Is it to test them in some way? Is it to see how they interact with others? Is it to determine personality?
Typically, group interviews are most successful for positions where people skills are most important. Jobs such as 'Sales Representatives' and 'Marketing Professionals' tend to fit very well when group interviews are used to screen individuals and to determine congruent personality types for team building (and organization building) mandates. Group interviews are extremely powerful for technical positions where some "people skills" are vital for success. For example, sales engineers, business development managers (technical industries) and technical service positions such as mechanical contractors or building maintenance.
The Research
As I mentioned above, the first step is to determine your objectives. For the sake of producing an example let us say that you’re seeking to hire a Maintenance Technician who is in his/her mid-career and with a strong technical background. What are the essential duties and responsibilities for this position and what are the key character features that create success for this position.
An easy way to find this out is to interview a current top performer who performs the exact same position within your firm. (any HR professional should be jumping up and down right now because they know what this is called!) Building your “Competency Model” is one of the first things you should be doing. This is when you determine, not only what technical skills or credentials an individual needs for success in a position, but what combination of skills, attributes and attitudes produce excellent performance in a particular position.
Let’s say you conclude that the following non-technical skills and attributes create the highest possibility for success for a maintenance technician:
· Excellent communication skills: communicates clearly, calmly and with a positive attitude to company employees, as well as contractors and clients.
· Team-player attributes: the technician will spend most of her/his time working with others so he must be able to work well within a team environment
· Leadership skills: This will be a highly visible position and with the right candidate will grow into a management position. Leadership skills are essential in the not too distant future.
The plan
You have 3 attributes that you must measure, so now you have to develop an interview that will measure them. We can measure these past 3 attributes in one single assignment. For group interviews you’ll need to invite professionals who are qualified for the position from a technical perspective. Ultimately, what you’re testing is their “soft” skills.
You will need to develop an exercise relating to the day-to-day tasks that are part of the position responsibilities. Sometimes, this is very difficult so you can always settle with something else. Maybe even a thinking game that will require organization, teamwork and diversity of opinion. The key here is to design a task that can be done in a short period of time and that will allow you to see if the qualities that you recognize as the most important are existent in the interviewees.
The interview
Your candidates come in. Introductions follow and all is well. You choose a classroom type environment to encourage your candidate’s competitive nature. You assign or randomly choose groups, assign the task and just watch what happens.
Typically you will see individuals with strong leadership qualities take point of the groups you have assigned, people with organizational skills will try to come up with a plan to accomplish the task. Team players will be very active in the group and will be very visible. Non team-players will not actively engage (also introverts but you will have to learn how to distinguish through the use of a second behavioral interview.) Excellent communicators will be able to communicate their ideas well to their group and actually influence the decisions made by the group.
To conclude, Group interviews are a great way to see prospective employees in action before you invest time with any particular individual. In addition, the time savings associated with group interviews to employers make the concept one that you should seriously consider. However, they should be used in combination with initial phone screening and care must be taken that behavioral interviews in general are more of an art and a science.
Joe Shaheen is a Sr. consultant with DxDt Professional Services. Please make all inquiries to services@dxdts.com . This article is designed as a general guide to employers. Please consult with your hiring and legal professional to administer your interviews. This is copyrighted material and may not be copied, disseminated or used in any way without express permission from DxDt Staffing and Professional Services.
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