5 Secrets One Hiring Expert Learned from Digging Into 350,000 Job Interviews

Successful hiring often hinges on one key element: the interview. If an interview goes well, there’s a much better chance you’ll hire the candidate. If the interview goes south . . . well, we all know how that can turn out. 

The interview process is so important that when Gem surveyed talent acquisition specialists at large companies and asked them, “What is your biggest struggle with candidates?” they didn’t say it was finding candidates, engaging them, or even getting them to accept offers. “No, their biggest struggle,” Teddy Chestnut, cofounder of BrightHire, told a group of talent acquisition leaders at LinkedIn’s recent Talent Connect conference, “was getting them through the interview process.” 

That’s why Teddy, a former senior manager of insights at LinkedIn, and Benjamin Sesser founded BrightHire, an interview intelligence platform, in 2019. Teddy and Ben wanted to make the hiring process better, faster, and more equitable. 

Drawing upon data gleaned from more than 350,000 interviews using BrightHire technology, they’ve learned what makes interviews work and what makes them fail. Teddy shared these insights in his engaging talk, Building a Winning Hiring Process. Here are the highlights: 

1. Nail the basics of interviewing

“First off, zero percent of hires are made without interviews,” Teddy said. “Maybe at some point your AI bot will interview my AI bot and I’ll get the job while I’m off playing golf. But for the foreseeable future, human conversations are at the heart of the hiring process.” 

LinkedIn data shows that 77% of candidates find the interview process extremely or very important in their decision to join a company. Meanwhile, 83% of candidates say that a negative interview experience could change their mind about a company or role.  

That’s why it’s vital to nail the basics of interviewing.

 For Teddy, these include: 

• Showing up for the interview on time
• Starting with an agenda 
• Leaving time for questions  
  

According to BrightHire research, these three basics occur 50% of the time when the interviewer is a hiring manager or other person on the hiring panel and 60% of the time when it’s a recruiter. So, even for talent professionals, there’s room for improvement. 

2. Cover the most important information early in the process

For the most successful outcomes, recruiters need to cover three subjects with every candidate: compensation, motivation, and work location. “These are the core of what needs to be covered in a recruiters’ screen every single time,” Teddy said. 

BrightHire found that when recruiters discussed these three things, candidates were 33% less likely to withdraw from the process and also converted into hires at a 30% higher rate. 

“And that makes sense, right?” Teddy said. “If we cover comp and work location up front, we’re not getting surprised late in the process. And if we have a good handle on candidates’ motivations from the outset, we can sell effectively at every stage of the interview process.”

3. Be prepared to answer the questions candidates are likely to ask 

“The questions that candidates want to know about change all the time,” Teddy said. Right now, candidates are curious about: 

• AI. “The percentage of interviews where the topic of AI has come up has literally doubled since the beginning of the year,” Teddy said. He noted that candidates want to know if AI will change the role for which they’re interviewing or if it will change the company’s business strategy.
•  Layoffs. “If your company has gone through layoffs,” Teddy said, “or if other companies in your industry have, this is absolutely part of the conversation your hiring team is having with candidates.” 
• Hybrid work. Teddy asked the audience how many of their companies have changed their work-from-home policy in the last 12 months. About 65% to 70% of the audience raised their hands. That small sampling shows there’s been a lot of change — and candidates want to know where your company stands.

4. Be aware of biases, especially gender-related ones 

One of the most interesting — and disturbing — things BrightHire has found in its data is that candidates, depending on their gender, are often treated differently in interviews. 

That’s not exactly a newsflash, but BrightHire’s numbers are. The company tracks whether interviews start on time and has found that, overall, 73% of interviews start within two minutes of their scheduled time. But when men interview women that drops a full five percentage points to 68%.”

What’s more, the company found that when men interview women, the men talk more. “We shared this with Adam Grant, one of our advisors,” Teddy added, “and he was like, ‘Oh, they’re mansplaining.’” 

Humor aside, this is a serious problem. “If you want to run consistent, equitable interviews,” Teddy told the audience, “having visibility on something like this is vital.” 

5. Skip the fifth, sixth, or 19th interview 

When the interview process goes on endlessly, it rarely benefits anyone. Teddy pointed to Google research that showed that after four interviews, the “amount of signal you get and the quality of hire basically flatlines.” 

But what about the associated costs? To find out, BrightHire looked at how much is really involved when there are 4, 8, 12, and 14 interviews per candidate. 

To hire one new employee, Teddy explained, recruiters often have to screen 20 candidates. Let’s say they pass 10 of those on to the hiring manager to screen. Of those 10, five make it to the official interviews. If each candidate has four interviews, that’s 20 interviews. When you add this up, that’s 50 interviews to make a single hire. 

But when that number jumps to eight interviews, it can take 70 interviews to hire a single employee. “Now, this isn’t rocket science,” Teddy said. “If you add more interviews, it takes more time.” And more time means more people-hours, which costs companies money. 

What’s more, BrightHire found that when your interview loops grow from four interviews to eight, your conversion rate plummets and candidates begin to drop out.

So, limit your interviews. It will not only save the company money, but it will also yield better results. 

If you’d like to learn more about how to win at the interviewing process, check out BrightHire’s Interview Maturity Model, which you can download here.