Interviewer: Jess S

Notetaker: Alaska Beck

Participant Number: P3

Notes on the Participant:

Session Date: 1/20/2023

Session Start Time: 9am CST

Session End Time: 9:50am CST

Discussion Guide:

HM Interview Discussion Guide

Learning Goal 0: Break the ice and get to know the individual beyond just the purpose of the interview. (5 min)

  1. Where are you calling from?
    1. Pittsburgh PA, upper st clair
  2. Tell me a bit about your current job/ position. How long have you been in that role?

    1. During hiring season, how many recruiting interviews do you do per week usually?

      1. Theorem 1 – 2 years now. Initially in consulting space, 15 years in business development. Move to recruiting division a year ago. “Business Dev. Manager” and team of 4 recruiters

    2. When was the last time you recruited and hired someone?

      1. Always hiring, a lot of turn over in recruiting…10-20% turn over rate. 1-2 interviews a week for new talent. This is just for people who work on their team. They also do 1000s of recruiting per week for their companies
      2. Joins recruiters on calls too..3-4 pre-screens a week, evaluate recordings of other pre-screens by colleaugues
      3. Last hired someone last week. Very little passive job postings: exclusively do outreach for roles..networks, linkedin for certain criteria. They do 50-60 messages to then get someone interested. 15-20 min pre screen to get vibes of candidate. If they pass pre-screen they go into a panel interview with others from their team. If its going to be a highly technical job, someone from that role will also join the panel. Following that, they meet the higher up boss and then they get the thumbs up or thumb down.
      4. Little back and forth with negotiations, lots of transparency during the process. Usually 3-4 steps throughout the process from start to finish.
      5. Hiring recruiters can be competitive, often have back-up candidates.
      6. Who makes the big decisions within the team? à recruiters often join in making decisions about hiring recruiters, or someone who hold the role if its hiring for a different role. Likely do not proceed with a candidate if it isn’t a unanimous decision.

Learning Goal 1: Understand more in-depth the current hiring process and identify pain points hiring managers/recruiters currently have

  1. Walk me through the last time you recruited for a role from beginning to finish.
    1. Who else is generally involved in the recruiting process (esp. the decision-making)? Who do you usually communicate with during the hiring process?
      1. How do you typically communicate?
        1. Channel in slack for each candidate pursuit…notes and feedback from rounds available to the hiring team.
    2. Do you conduct interviews primarily in person or remotely?
      1. What platform do you use for remote interviews?
    3. How long did it take you to find a suitable candidate for that role?
    4. What material do you request from candidates? [resume, portfolio, website, LinkedIn page,…]
      1. We look to see thinking through exercises and wanting to see their questions about the exercise. “Have you ever thought about them doing this and then sending it to you?” à We want them to feel like they’re doing it during the work day, very open ended. This does not necessarily carry more weight than a resume.
        1. For recruiters, we look for a resume and discussion-based rounds
      2. How much weight do you give to each of these components?
        1. They’re still working on determining weights of materials…they also believe that a lot of skills can be trained.
      3. [Follow-up] What other material of the candidate do you look at to inform your hiring decision?
      4. Have you ever asked candidates for a video recording as part of the recruitment or hiring process?
        1. [If yes, probe]:
          1. What tool did candidates use to send you their video?
          2. Why did you decide to use this method?
          3. In what ways did it support your recruiting and hiring process?
          4. In what ways did it not support your recruiting and hiring process?
          5. How likely are you to recommend the asynchronous process to a fellow recruiter?
    5. What were some of the qualifications or qualities that you were looking for in a candidate?
      1. As the hiring process advances and as you get face time with a candidate, what are you looking for in these interactions? What about them tells you that they’re a great fit for a role?
        1. Their philosophy à you can be experienced or not experienced but one might not always be the best fit for a team. They like to see additional skills that are valuable. “a lot of people can be recruiters”. People who have held similar roles can recruit well for that type of role.
        2. “sticky” work experience…wants to know they WHY of hoping around jobs. This isn’t always a bad thing.
        3. Great communicators are a positive, shows how they will likely communicate on the job.
        4. Candidates who are “ahead of the game” with their skills may be good for big accounts, while less experienced people may be good for a small account à completely need based.
        5. Genuine interest, good communication, resume, skills
        6. They look at linkedIn profile if interested in candidate à composed web presence? Look at facebook on the down low. Do they engage with their network?
          1. After digital evaluation, they start the interview process and its mostly discussion based.
    6. What are some of the problems that you faced in the hiring process the last time that you recruited and hired someone? What are some of the common challenges in your hiring process?
      1. How much time does each step of your hiring process take?
        1. [Probe]: At what specific phase of the interview process do you experience the most difficulty?
          1. No “test” you can give to measure competencies. This takes a lot of conversations and you never know if people are saying things just because they know that’s what you want to hear. Hard to weed people out
          2. Sometimes people will say things they know will give strong “hire” signals but it wasn’t the truth once they started.
          3. Hardest thing to prove out: validity of network
          4. Metrics based à for recruiting, you either are good at placing people or you aren’t. hard to tell if people can push to work for the needed outcome
        2. [Probe, as needed]: Is there a part of the process that you feel often “wastes” your time?
          1. Ownership of the decision making during the process à giving a thumbs up for the wrong person is hard to live with. “like dating and you find out a few months later its not a fit”
          2. Sometimes because its so discussion based we may touch on the same things and maybe we don’t always go as deep and detailed as maybe we could if it was more scripted.
          3. Under 2 weeks for the interview process. Makes candidate feel good, and they do a 30-60-90 day plan for the hires to make sure they start off okay.
    7. Walk me through a time when you sourced a pool of strong candidates.
      1. [Probe, as needed]: How did you identify these potential candidates (e.g., what tools, platforms, etc. did you use)?
        1. Hired someone who love to build out teams, smart, nice, wanted to try something new, lots of skills that could be applied. Sometimes its nice to work somewhere that is willing to cultivate talent.
        2. They hired someone who had experience with large accounts and they had grown an account very large and that ended up being a great fit that they wouldn't normally think is a fit.
      2. [Probe, as needed]: What do you think helped you make the right decision?
        1. Taking a change to hire someone they wouldn’t normally find compelling. Experiments don’t always work but sometimes it works great.
    8. Walk me through a time when you experienced difficulty in sourcing a pool of strong candidates.
      1. [Probe, as needed]: What were the primary challenges you encountered?
      2. [Probe, as needed]: How did you solve for those challenges?
    9. What kind of tools or software do you use in the recruiting process?
      1. [Probe if their answers are too general]: Any particular communication, assessment, and/or dashboard tools do you use during the hiring process?
        1. All LinkedIn à linkedin has so many flaws but is also a highly populated platform. LinkedIn recruiter, Linkedin sales navigator. They also recruit through personal referrals.
        2. [Probe]: How do you manage the interview progress?
          1. At some point we absolutely need to meet on video. Can do a phone call but video is a must at some pojnt. 90% of the time they use google meet to chat 15-20 minutes.
        3. [Probe]: Any initial screening tools do you use before moving to the first round of interview?
        4. [Probe]: How do you usually reach out to candidates to schedule interview and notify them results?
        5. [Probe]: How do you take notes during the interview process and comment on candidates performance?
      2. [Probe if they do use a tool]: How does it work?
      3. What do you like about it? What do you wish was different with this tool? Any features that you wish it had?
      4. Where do you usually post job openings? How do the candidates find your job postings?
  2. Bearing in mind your recruiting process from start to finish:
  3. If you had a magic wand and could easily change anything about the recruiting process, what would you change, and why?

Wrap Up

We are nearing the end of our questions. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. Before we sign off, we have a couple more questions for you:

  1. Is there anything we haven’t covered today that you’d like to share? No.
  2. If we have questions as we move forward, are you comfortable with us reaching out to you? Yes!