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158 How to Hire A-Players
Conduct Multiple Interviews
It’s best to interview each serious candidate more than once and to
conduct these interviews on at least two or three separate days. The
interview is an artificial process designed to help you get to know a
complete stranger quickly and in depth. You want to know whether
people follow through on their commitments, communicate effectively
via the phone and e-mail, and know how to get results. Meeting
with them on different days will allow you to see if people write
thank-you notes, show up on time for subsequent interviews, and
remain enthusiastic about working for you. You can’t begin to get
all of this insight in just one day of interviews.
A-Player Principle: Conduct multiple interviews over
several different days to see if candidates follow up and
follow through.
Use Multiple Interviewers
Goldman Sachs is legendary for having 20 to 30 people interview a
candidate before he or she is hired. Before it was acquired by Macy’s,
May Department Stores interviewed every candidate for assistant
buyer nine times, and many of these interviews included multiple
interviewers. You make better hiring decisions when you involve
multiple interviewers in the process. If you can, involve all the interviewers
in the creation of the A-Player Profile. Involvement creates
buy-in. If the interviewers participate in defining the requirements
of the job, often they are more committed to making sure that the
people they interview meet these requirements. Multiple interviewers
provide you with multiple points of view. You want as many
opinions as is feasible when you are making hiring decision.
Create Interviewing Teams
In general, interviewing candidates with a partner is preferable to
doing so alone. When the other person asks the candidate a