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?

This.

'Team fit' to me sounds really vague and is usually a justification for not wanting to hire someone who is older, disabled or from a different background.

I have hired many people and mainly worked in the third sector. I always based my final decision on a combination of testing (presentation or written test as part of the interview) and set/scored questions. Basically I hired the best person for the job.

However I have had other managers involved in the process who rejected candidates because they were more qualified than they were (so they were scared of being outshined) which to me is completely inappropriate.

I am 55 now and looking for a new job and I have seen interviewers immediately stop paying attention at interview stage when they meet my in person, so age and background is definitely a factor for being rejected...and I am sure this is rebranded as 'team fit' but is just good old discrimination.

I work in a consulting industry so I am often hiring with a specific client or project in mind. I specifically need to tick off the key technical skills and qualifications and then I choose a candidate based on:

• Does the client want someone with huge potential for growth or someone who'll happily do a routine job well for the next few years without getting bored
• Do I like them / will they fit in with the team generally
• How much salary do they want and is that in line with the money I have, the money the client is willing to pay
• Do they have any other skills that I don't need for this specific client but that might come in handy for other projects

I have no issue with people with lives, families, work from home needs, etc. I am always wary if they only thing they want to talk about is money (I expect them to ask at least one question about salary, that's normal). I am also wary of folks who up and leave a job every 12-18 months. That normally tells me they aren't very good and they leave before their being not very good catches up with them!

I hire a lot of people, most work out. I've hired a few total duds but you can't win them all!

This

Personality. Every time. I use CV to formulate questions, I don't believe anything the CV says until I hear the candidate talk to it.

'Team fit' to me sounds really vague and is usually a justification for not wanting to hire someone who is older, disabled or from a different background.

Alternatively, there will be employers who are disappointed they have ended up with a team full of people who seem very much the same and will have deliberately given 'points' to people from different backgrounds and with different experiences. ie deliberately chosen the older (or younger) person (or any other characteristic) to make the team more diverse. They will 'fit' the team better because they don't fit the same mould as the others in the team.

You've made yourselves sound insufferable, that's quite a talent in itself!

It will depend a lot on the type of organisation I think. I work for an organisation where the whole process is designed to be as fair as it possibly can be. When I get applications to shortlist, I don't get to see any of the candidates' personal information at all except the statement they've made on their form and their previous employers and job titles. I don't see their age, academic background, name, gender, where they live, nothing. The first time I get their names is when we shortlist them for interview. Everyone gets asked exactly the same questions and we do have to score them of course.

However, if there's more than one candidate who would be appointable according to the scores - which there generally has been when I've been recruiting - we do take into account things like the rapport we had at the interview and how well I think they'd fit in with the rest of the team. Not in terms of background or age or anything like that, just whether their personality would be a good fit. And just as importantly, how well I think they'd be able to get along with the people we work with regularly. For example, someone might give really good answers but is clearly a very timid sort of person and might not hold their own against some of the more robust senior internal stakeholders they'd have to handle. Or they might give good answers but come across as extremely arrogant and over-confident, which is just as much of a problem for us. If necessary, we'll rescore the answers to put our preferred candidate one point ahead to offer them the role.

I've been around a very long time and worked with hundreds of companies as a consultant. In my experience, this is sadly very rare.

Agreed.

I think it is naive to believe that many companies are actively looking to diversify their teams in this way.

Sadly I agree too.

Maybe an inclusion professional at the firm might want this for their team but the hiring managers who have an actual job to do (sorry) just want the best person to do the job, not balance a target quota.

'Team fit' to me sounds really vague and is usually a justification for not wanting to hire someone who is older, disabled or from a different background.

Not necessarily. There was a thread on here recently and one PP said as far as they are concerned, powering up their laptop is “work time” and they would not dream of powering up beforehand and being ready to work at their actual start time. I can tell you now, no one in my team would want to work with anyone with that attitude. So yes, ‘team fit’ can be a thing.

I'd say that is attitude rather than team fit, though.

Team fit for me is when the hiring manager is looking for someone that is of similar age/background/ethnicity/education to the existing workforce. People do tend to be drawn to people who they perceive to be in their image.

It's not healthy but neither is shoehorning in "diversity hires" because someone somewhere wants to improve the business image. Hire the best person for the job.

(Although I'm quite sure the person waiting until the clock struck 9 before logging on would not say that outright at an interview. That's why interviewing is a skill - a good interviewer will surface someone's attitude to getting the job done rather than clock watching)

Team fit for us. My line manager and I interviewed six candidates for a healthcare receptionist position and we both knew who we wanted within five minutes of starting the interview.

The candidate who scored one more point than the candidate we wanted was very dismissive with a ‘been there, done that’ attitude and almost like the job was beneath her and we just knew she wouldn’t gel with the team and probably not the patients either. We re-scored our preferred candidate and somehow found two extra points she’s still with us and we both agree it was the best hire we’ve ever made! She is wonderful with patients and gets lovely feedback, and the whole team adores her.

When we rang the other candidate to tell her she hadn’t got the job, she started arguing with us so we considered it a bullet dodged.

Team fit doesn’t mean ‘just like us’ within our team as we are all very different people but we just get along so well and we could just see her fitting right in.

Yes it can be very difficult to chose

yes if you get taken to lunch with the team it’s to see you get on ok

the team was “rather” diverse in terms age, sex, ethnicity, religion, ND, disabilities, transgender , sexuality… it’s just how it evolves over time

it was far more likely that the candidate would show some bias than team fit being used to create a “people like us” vibe

Our department is currently hiring for two positions. A colleague and I were asked to meet the candidates after their third interviews to get our opinion on cultural fit. I’m not used to working in a large organisation - we have recently been acquired by a global brand - and this idea of unqualified people getting a say in whether someone who has already made time for three interviews gets the job or not appalled me so I declined to take part.

This is an unusual attitude? Team fit is really important, not just for the existing team but also for the newcomer. It sounds like candidates are level-pegging, so in the end team fit will determine it. I think you'll be viewed negativity by management for declining. We often have our whole team meet potential newcomers before final decision.

But surely you only do that if the candidates have met minimum requirements and can do the role?

Team fit is extremely important. It doesn’t need to mean ‘one of us’ but if you work in a team day in day out, getting on is important.

I felt like it was open to abuse. What if I didn’t want to work with them because of their age, sex or religion? Someone with those views wouldn’t say so of course but they could make up other objections.

It wasn’t viewed negatively as the HR director felt having too many of us was a bit mob-handed anyway.

I don't think anyone is talking about what you call "diversity hires" though.
The conversation is about once people have got to interview stage, so have obviously 'qualified' for the role in terms of skills, technical ability, experience, etc, and it comes down to 2 or 3 candidates who, on paper are all able to do the job. At that stage, you have to make a choice on something, and I think fitting in with the current team seems like a better way to go than pulling names out of a hat.

For all those doubting that people might actively want to appoint people who diversify a team, then this might be industry based, as I have come across it more than once, both in my various work places, and also known it happen to a member of my wider family. Does it happen a lot ? Probably not. Does it happen? Yes. Although only, of course, once the candidates are otherwias equal in ability to do the role.

I've been on interview panels. Given equal candidates, I'd pick the one who'd be the best fit.

I was in on one interview and there was a strong candidate (A) and a 'CF' (B). Both of us interviewing said definitely A. My boss wanted B so we got B. Boss had interviewed separately and was based in another country.

A good fit in the team because if you have a bad team it just won't work.

Team fit for me is when the hiring manager is looking for someone that is of similar age/background/ethnicity/education to the existing workforce. People do tend to be drawn to people who they perceive to be in their image.
I think that happens a lot, and it's unfair.

I've worked in lots of teams, and I'd think of team fit as things like working together. Age and background isn't really relevant. Attitude is.

That isn't how I interpret team fit though. To me team fit is nothing to do with diversity hires or picking someone who is like myself.

Team fit is about how a candidate would fit into the established team. So do they have the right skills, the right attitude, how will their personality fit with the other team members etc.

Attitude - for my team we are happy to teach for missing skills or experience but you can’t change attitude

what school they went too or
who their dad is or
the one with the biggest tits....

aka 'team fit'