Optimizing Your Interview Process for Better Hires

No talent acquisition (TA) professional sets out to make a subpar hire, especially when a poor hiring decision is costly. Yet, when sitting down with prospective hires, most recruiters resort to the traditional interview process, which consists mainly of behavioral questions. More often than not, this approach barely scratches the surface and fails to reveal useful information about a candidate’s competencies. 

Wouldn’t it be better to immerse job candidates in unconventional scenarios to gather key insights into their technical skills, interpersonal abilities, critical thinking, and tech savviness?  

In this article, you’ll discover the missteps in the traditional interview process and how to optimize your approach for better hires. You’ll hear from Geva Whyte, a Recruiting Coordinator with experience at Lyft, Stripe, and OpenAI, who will offer his perspectives on important factors most recruiters overlook.

Understanding the interview process

Before going into detail, you want to understand the process of screening candidates from a larger pool. Typically, it’s a multistep practice that entails: 

1. Intake call: The TA professionals and the hiring manager (or department lead) meet to establish the foundations for the recruiting process. The focus of the intake meeting is on the role requirements, responsibilities, must-have qualifications, salary expectations, and deadlines.
2. Sourcing: After clarifying the hiring needs, the recruitment team searches for candidates through job postings, career sites, social media, and networking.
3. Screening: Then, the hiring team screens candidates to evaluate basic qualifications, skills, experience, and interest in the role.
4. Scheduling interviews: Once qualified candidates pass the initial screening, the TA pros schedule an interview. The team communicates expectations about the interview process, including whom the candidate will meet, what to prepare, and any technical assessments the candidate must complete.
5. Interview rounds: Interviewers then execute rounds of interviews to assess how candidates handle certain situations. They can administer tests to evaluate knowledge and skills and check whether the candidate fits well within the company culture, team dynamics, and work environment.
6. Post-interview debrief: After completing the interview, the TA team gathers feedback from all interviewers and scores them to make an objective evaluation. Based on the interview debrief, the recruitment team decides whether to proceed with the candidate, request an additional round of interviews, or disqualify them.

But the question that puts everything into perspective is: What are the common missteps in traditional interview methods?

Common issues and inefficiencies in traditional interview methods

At the core, your objective is to find talented people to drive impactful results, contribute to your culture, and stay with you long-term. However, the traditional approach might not always give you sufficient information about candidates’ competence, leading to poor hiring decisions, long time-to-hire, and negative candidate experience.

Common inefficiencies in traditional interview methods are:

Bias evaluation due to lack of a structured approach

One common flaw in traditional interviews is the lack of structure. Without consistent frameworks, questions may vary from candidate to candidate, making it difficult to compare prospective hires fairly. Your company can end up hiring based on gut feelings rather than objective criteria.

Limited feedback loop

Most traditional interviews offer minimal or no feedback after the interview, especially for rejected job seekers. This frustrates candidates, creates a poor perception of the organization, and discourages job seekers from reapplying in the future or recommending others.

“The talent pool isn’t as big or as deep as organizations like to believe – candidates talk to each other. Even if a candidate doesn’t make it to the offer stage, they’ll still mention a positive interviewing experience, which could lead to them referring other people they know,” says Geva Whyte, the former recruiting coordinator at Lyft, Stripe, and OpenAI.

Cultural fit overemphasis

Some interview processes overemphasize cultural fit without considering how candidates from diverse backgrounds might add value. With such an approach, a company risks having a homogenous team that stifles innovation by excluding diverse perspectives that may challenge existing norms.

Over-reliance on the interview alone

Many recruiters rely on the interview as the primary tool for evaluating candidates rather than using a combination of assessments, tests, and other methods.

Identifying hiring needs

A good hiring-needs analysis differentiates between a great hire and a mis-hire. It clarifies:

• The hard skills and abilities your organization needs for a role
• Soft skills that influence how a candidate interacts and performs in a team setting
• How a candidate adds to your company culture

“Stripe got a lot of things right. One of the things Stripe did exceptionally well was hiring incredibly brilliant people who were equally humble, caring, and empathetic.

During my tenure there, I hardly encountered anyone with an ego, and I received some of the most significant career growth and development,” explains Geva Whyte.

Identifying and anticipating your recruitment needs reduces the risk of mis-hires because it allows you to plan your talent acquisition strategy and hire based on clear criteria. It also identifies skill gaps within your organization that could limit your opportunities to grow and stay competitive.

Knowing your hiring needs also increases your company’s hiring efficiency. It makes it easier for recruiters to source quality candidates quickly because they know which skill set and qualities to look for in prospective hires. 

However, identifying hiring needs is tough. It’s easy to get tangled up in the traditional approach instead of focusing on what matters most for your company. 

To help you assess your staffing requirements, consider the tips below.

Best Practice	Why it’s helpful
1. Execute a skill gap analysis to identify areas where your organization needs to acquire new skills.	You’ll get a clear picture of the skills you need to hire for and clarify your hiring goals.
2. Build an ideal candidate profile (ICP).	You’ll set clear requirements for candidates based on the needs of the open role.
3. Create a skill-based job description.	It encourages qualified candidates from all backgrounds to apply.
4. Consider personality and culture.	You’ll decrease the risk of hiring someone who’ll negativley impact your company’s culture.

Creating a structured interview process

Depending on the company size, you may not have a structured approach to interviews. Instead, the TA team might be crafting makeshift processes for every interview. 

Adopting a structured process can help your company:

Weed out bias with a fairer standard evaluation process

With structured frameworks, each candidate answers the same set of questions in the same order, making it easier to assess and compare job prospects fairly.

Make better hires

A key part of structured interviews is evaluating candidates’ skills against the set job requirements. This forces your interviewers to review candidates based on the job description, which might result in better hires.

Reduces time-to-hire

Unstructured interviews usually run in several rounds to reveal everything you need to know about a candidate. In contrast, structured interviews focus on a specific topic, allowing you to learn more about a candidate during one interview than you would with an unstructured approach. This results in quicker interviews and faster hiring.

But how do you standardize interviews? Here are five best practices:

1. Use a set of core questions. You can categorize them as skill-based, behavioral, and situational questions.
2. Develop an interview guide. It should outline the core questions the interviewer will ask during each round and provide a time frame for each section of the interview.
3. Define consistent evaluation criteria to avoid bias. You can standardize scoring rubric, weigh key skills, or use a checklist of key competencies.
4. Train interviewers to use structured methods. It will ensure consistency, fairness, and a more objective comparison.
5. Utilize technology for consistency. You can automate scheduling, pre-screening, assessment, and feedback-gathering.

With a standard approach, you can make more objective, data-driven hiring decisions, deliver a positive candidate experience, and secure top talent.

Using technology to improve the interview process

About 99% of TA teams utilize technology to streamline their interview processes, automate tedious manual tasks, and improve the candidate experience. Platforms like GoodTime have made it possible to automate most of the interview tasks, freeing you up to focus on genuine human connection.

You can use technology to:

Automate scheduling

A platform like GoodTime can integrate with calendars like Google Calendar and Outlook, allowing candidates to choose available time slots based on their schedules. Automating interview scheduling eliminates the back-and-forth emails or calls that often delay the hiring process. Plus, it’ll handle time zone conversions if you have candidates in different regions so that interviews are set at appropriate times for all parties.

Conduct AI-driven assessments

Around 62% of TA pros are optimistic about AI’s impact on recruitment. With an AI-powered tool, you can automate résumé pre-screening and initial assessments of answers to preliminary questions. This allows you to filter unqualified candidates early and reduce how long candidates wait for feedback. 

Automate interview workflow

Platforms like GoodTime can automate 90% of your interview workflow — from scheduling to feedback collection. TA pros can receive reminders, access structured interview guides, and complete evaluations in a streamlined manner. You can build custom workflows for different roles so that interviews are tailored but still automated for efficiency.

Enhancing candidate experience

According to Forbes, job seekers with poor candidate experience may decline job offers, withdraw their applications, or discourage others from applying. In other words, poor experiences negatively impact your talent acquisition ability, brand reputation as an employer, and overall business growth.

To enhance candidates’ experience, you can:

Craft sharp and thorough job descriptions

A job description is what sets up a good candidate’s experience. So, instead of only listing responsibilities and requirements, make sure your job description has the following:

• The skills the job prospect needs to succeed at the role and how you’ll evaluate them
• The impact you expect from the role
• What success will look like in the first six months
• Your company’s values

Convey your organizational culture and why candidates would want to work with you. You can tell a story while using inclusive language to give the candidate an idea of what to expect on a day-to-day basis within the role.

Simplify the application process

A potential hire might abandon their job application if it’s lengthy and time-consuming. While candidates are looking for a better workplace, they are less tolerant of a cumbersome hiring process — often giving up on complex procedures for a more straightforward job opening. To reduce the drop-off rates, simplify the process by shortening the application form, reducing the number of interview rounds, and providing clear timelines upfront.

Offer continuous status update

Keep your candidates informed throughout the interview process to maintain interest in the role. Otherwise, qualified talents may assume they’re no longer being considered and pursue other opportunities. Even if you don’t hire the candidate, offer an update to give a positive impression of your brand.

Help the candidate prepare for the interview

You can help prospective hires prepare by sharing what the interview will look like, explaining the assessment, and telling them who’ll be there. Providing such information can reduce anxiety and build confidence. 

Training interviewers

Getting your interview process right depends on equipping your interviewers with the right training and knowledge to offer a consistent and fair process. With the right training, your interviewers can deliver faster time-to-hire, enhance candidate acceptance rate, improve hire quality, and reduce bias. 

You can promote ongoing interviewer training and development by:

• Offering regular workshops to refresh interviewers’ skills and keep them updated on best practices
• Running ongoing training on recognizing and reducing unconscious bias in the interview process
• Reminding interviewers to use consistent, structured evaluation and standardized scoring systems
• Implementing a peer review system where interviewers can sit in each other’s interviews and provide constructive feedback

As a TA leader, training your interviewers will lighten your workload and help you focus on attracting talent in a competitive, candidate-driven market.

Continuous improvement

The key to successful interviews is continuous process improvement based on the feedback you collect from candidates and stakeholder input. Such a proactive approach ensures that your interview process remains efficient, fair, and effective while adapting to evolving business needs and market conditions.

To continuously improve your interview process, consider monitoring and analyzing the following key recruitment metrics:

• Time-to-hire: This helps identify bottlenecks that slow your process.
• Interview-to-hire ratio: It checks the efficiency of your pre-screening and assessment criteria.
• Candidates drop-off rate: It aids in establishing whether the process is too lengthy, unclear, or unwelcoming.
• Offer acceptance rate: This examines if there are issues with the interview experience, company perceptions, or compensation offered.
• Diversity hiring: The metric helps determine if there is bias in the hiring or interview process.

Optimize your interviewing process to recruit the right person

With employers fighting for the top talents to fill their open positions, your interview process should be flawless to help attract quality candidates and identify the best fit for your team.

One way to optimize your interview process and secure better hires is by using technology. You can automate mundane tasks, streamline processes, and free time for more meaningful human interactions.

Ready to hire better candidates with an optimized interview process? See how GoodTime’s interview scheduling software can help you improve candidate experience, win over top talent, and hire faster.