In your organization, who conducts candidate interviews? Who makes hiring decisions? How involved is your team — the actual people who will be working with the new hire?
There is a growing trend in hiring to conduct peer interviews as part of the hiring process. Allowing employees a chance to meet, interact with, and evaluate potential new co-workers has been shown to help improve hiring and attract better talent. When employees are given the chance to have a say in the selection of their colleagues, it helps build better teams, improves morale, and gives them a sense of ownership in their jobs. At the same time, peer interviewing allows candidates the opportunity to evaluate their own feelings about your company, and get a better sense of what it would be like to actually work there.
In order for peer interviewing to enhance your hiring process, though, it must be done correctly. Even small mistakes can drive away top talent, or even leave your company vulnerable to legal challenges.
Imagine you are a candidate for a great position. You have made it through interviews with HR and the hiring manager for the job. You have had good rapport with everyone so far, and are excited when you are called in for a peer interview. Only when you arrive, you are ushered to a conference room where eight people sit around the table. They each have a copy of your resume, and a list of questions. For the next two hours, you are interrogated about everything from how you handle conflict to your biggest pet peeves at work. You leave exhausted, feeling like you just survived a round of hazing, and you are not sure you even want the job anymore.
Such scenarios are common in companies that use peer interviewing. In an attempt to get as many perspectives as possible and to see how the new person would fit in with the team, hiring managers bring together the whole department to meet with the candidate. While some people are up for that type of challenge, most end up feeling intimidated and exhausted.
Effective peer interviewing involves a lot more than just throwing the candidate to the team and hoping he or she comes out unscathed. You need to develop a plan, provide training, and a fair evaluation process to ensure that all candidates are evaluated equally.
Including peer interviewing in your hiring process requires a few important steps.
Giving your employees a voice in the hiring process can help improve employee engagement, which in turn leads to higher morale, higher productivity, and in some cases, cost savings, so before you hire your next team member, consider getting the input of his or her potential coworkers.
Back to blog list