To ask how hiring managers decide who gets the job?

[HonestTealPoster]

For those of you who have been involved in recruitment, particularly as hiring managers or interview panel members, how do you ultimately decide which candidate to offer a job to?

Say, in situations where you’ve interviewed two or more strong candidates at the final stage.

Is it purely down to interview scores or do things like personality, rapport, team fit and overall impression influence the decision?

And how often is it a genuinely difficult decision between two candidates?

Honestly, personality and team fit. If they’ve made it to final stage in theory all could technically do the job so the other stuff becomes more important.

Edited to add for me it’s not often been super close, there’s usually a stand out candidate

Team fit etc. then jiggle the scores to reflect that.

In my experience, by that stage, it’s a gut feel based on softer things like personality, not what they said but how they said it, their overall demeanour, how they’d fit in with the rest of the team, etc.

Is it purely down to interview scores or …

Interview scores cover technical and team fit etc. requirements , it isn’t one or the other. It’s important to be able to evidence the decisions

Team fit and tenacity. What we look for is an unflappable personality as the work is client focused and intense. If someone says they deal with stress inwardly and doesn't ever mention sharing a difficult call with their teammate, we would be worried a bit.I wish I could explain honestly what the job is and whether they can cope with it, we have a roundabout way of it and hope for the best.

I usually give them a task for the interview to test how good they'd be at the actual job. I'm looking for someone who can talk concisely, present themselves well and comes across as a team player and likeable.

Once it gets down to the final stage they're usually all pretty good - or else we've only put one person through and it's just a "nod" interview because they're basically getting the job... If you're against other candidates at the end stage they'll all be capable of doing the job, so it usually comes down to who presents their ideas the best and is most likeable

Personality and team fit over perfect answers every day

Recently recruited for a senior role. Two strong candidates. One scored slightly higher than the other and could have done the job with his eyes closed but was such a jumped up smarmy prick we gave it to the other person who fits in with the team so well

If all scores are equal, I move to team fit.

as per a pp, once gave a position to someone with less “points” ie no direct experience, because I can teach the job, we can’t/wont teach soft skills.

i need someone who can converse and meet the communication needs of everyone from a cleaner who can’t speak English up to the CEO of a multi billion pound corporation. And go straight from one to the other without missing a beat, whilst gelling with the team.

and again, anyone who couldn’t reference needing to lean on a team member or ask for support got a big question mark above them tbh.

Creativity. I’m not looking at what you’ve done so much as what you will do with those skills to grow my business. Then team fit. Concise answers. A person that clearly sees themselves in the role and can convince me they’ve understood the brief.

Creativity. I’m not looking at what you’ve done so much as what you will do with those skills to grow my business. Then team fit. Concise answers. A person that clearly sees themselves in the role and can convince me they’ve understood the brief.

Interview scores combined with task score. If tied and both feel a good fit, we go back to the application score too.

We also ask how candidates interact with the reception team. Being dissmissive, rude, etc is going to earn someone a major black mark.

Sometimes it's a case of 1 candidate being stronger in 1 aspect of a role and the 2nd being stronger in another aspect. In that instance, we'd think about what could be taught versus what do they need to do from day 1.

It will depend on the job and what the role entails as to how much is technical ability, experience, and how much importance there is on soft skills, communication, and yes, personality.

As a pp said, those soft skills will be included in the scoring system to some extent, where that is important to the job. Also as pp have said, by interview stage one would presume that everyone is 'qualified' for the role in a competitive market. Of course, in a less competitive market some roles have to take who they can get.

It's a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question.
No-one is giving the job to someone because they come across as a nice person who likes a laugh, if they haven't shown the ability to do the job, but if you have two candidates who appear equal in all measures like qualification, skills, and experience, then it makes sense to choose the person you think will 'fit in' most easily and get on with colleagues, and, where appropriate customers / clients / service users / patients / general public.

It all depends on the team you're recruiting to. Our team is small and the work we do is very hands on and think on your feet - we've had people score well on the knowledge parts but ultimately lose out to others as they can't put the knowledge into practice.

Interview scores - we check technical knowledge (I've only interviewed for technical roles,) and for more generic things like team work, communication, etc. We need security clearance and will sponsor someone to get it, but if scores were otherwise equal and one had it and the other didn't, we'd go for the one with it. I think only once did we get equal scores.

There will be more than one of us interviewing. We're usually closely aligned in how we score people, but we talk about questions where we're not. I hold sway on techy Linux questions, other guys overrule me for Window server (goes with our own technical history.) Non-techy questions, we talk about why we put score X and come to an agreement- I've found in some cases I am very sure about what I think, and other times not so much, but we've always come to an agreement to date.

Ultimately, if there's still a tie, which one did we like most on a personal level?

It's not bad if you've got a close second - we have sometimes had our first choice decline the offer (the good ones can have more than one job offer to pick from.) So then we ask the second choice.

We have a policy that all interviewees get feedback, and all internals get feedback, even if they don't get an interview.

I got to the final (fourth) round recently and got rejected due to being too experienced. Rather unusually, the hiring team gave me feedback. I was one of two finalists and the other person could be offered the role at a lower grade/salary so they went with them, to save money (they didn’t say this bit).

Similar to others, we give a task to check
some basics, a tour by one of our admin staff and then
a panel interview. They may also have an informal chat with the potential team. We like to do one interview if possible so prefer to get everything done in one day.

We check the task to ensure they meet the basic requirements, then look at the interview scores. If we are finding it hard then we tend to just talk it through but the potential line manager gets the final say.

We also get feedback from whoever gives the tour as we get a sense of how engaged they are.

Have not actually had too many where it has been really close.

And the ones who answer my male colleague rather than me, even when I asked the question, they have chosen by their actions not to get the job. These are usually the ones who are not as good anyway.

Not in the UK.

Technical skills are tested in the first round(s), everyone in the final round should have them at workable level.

The last round is about the best fit for the target region. Level of independence, extra language, confidence aligned with skills, the team they will work with.

I interview and the outcome has to be based on scores. However, those scores are impacted by the bias of the interviewer. I interview with some people who will always down score an older woman, or give more points to an Oxbridge graduate who has been unable to actually answer the question. So in theory, only based on the scores, but the scoring is not, in my opinion, objective.

In my organisation it’s strictly done by scoring, over a single interview, which unfortunately in some cases has not resulted in the “best” person being offered the job. Some interviewers will be creative in the scoring to allow their preferred candidate to score well, usually an internal applicant but not always, others stick rigidly to the scoring matrix and we end up with staff who are good at interviews but less good at the actual job. This is frustrating as the personal qualities needed are as important as the actual skills and this doesn’t always come accross so well in an interview.

Honestly whilst I might have had multiple good candidates there has always been a stand out difference between top two. Competence, and potential are two biggest things for me. Don’t care about time served and fit is over rated - sometimes team needs a mix dynamic

What does 'team fit' mean? Is it a code word to discriminate against someone whose face does not fit?

Having interviewed many candidates, I would look for someone who we can work with. Mainly their personality but not their 'fit' whatever that means.

I live in a bit of a talent dessert, there are some attractive cities close by and there is a notable brain drain effect.
What I have learned is that you can train most things, so I look for ability to think, honesty, and how personable they are.

That is tough, sorry.

But fourth round? WTAF they don't mind messing people about do they and you didn't even work for them? I think you probably dodged a bullet there.
I've rejected third interviews on principle (ed and when I am recruiting I try to keep it to one or maybe two interviews)

Good luck with the job hunt.