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23 Recruiting Hacks for Interviewing and Closing Candidates
The document provides 23 tips for improving the interviewing and closing stages of the hiring process. Some key tips include using scheduling tools to make interviews more convenient for candidates, standardizing feedback practices, and sending personalized gifts to candidates to help close offers. Interviewing best practices include organizing regular interviewer trainings, customizing interview kits, and collecting feedback promptly. Closing strategies focus on personalization through video messages, snacks from sign-in sheets, and phone calls instead of emails to convey excitement about candidates.
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23 Recruiting Hacks for Interviewing and Closing Candidates
- 1. Part 3 Interviewing andclosing
- 2. Thanks for joiningus! ● Please use the chat box for questions ● Tweet at us using #recruitinghacks @lever ● $100 Amazon Gift Card for the most thought-provoking tweet Part 3 — Interviewing and closing
- 3. Our speakers Mollie Bassett SalesRecruiter, Lever Ashley Kelly Director of Sales Development, Lever Part 3 — Interviewing and closing
- 4. Interviewing Part 3 —Interviewing and closing
- 5. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #1 Use Easy Book to help candidates self- schedule Make it effortless for candidates to schedule their own interviews using Easy Book, and you can spend less time coordinating them yourself and more time on strategic recruiting.
- 6. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #2 Give every new interviewer a cheat sheet Create a quick cheat sheet with details like sample questions, qualities to prioritize, and tips for how to authentically share their own story and that of the company.
- 7. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #3 Organize a quarterly interviewer check-in To help your interviewers do their best work, organize a quarterly interviewer check-in. Ask your hiring manager to lead the check-ins with you, as you share process updates and revisit interview best practices.
- 8. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #4 Bring in your sales leader to teach the team how to sell Recruiting and sales have so much in common. At your next interviewer training, bring in your most seasoned sales leader to share their strategies for finding new business, building rapport, and ultimately getting their prospect to say yes.
- 9. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #5 Customize each hiring process with interview kits Build these kits in Lever, and you can give each interviewer a set list of questions, change up scorecards according to role, and include additional info for interviewers to keep in mind. Remind your interviewers of all the important info you relayed at the beginning of your candidate search.
- 10. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #6 Block 15 minutes on each interviewer’s calendar after the interview to get feedback in Submitting feedback is a crucial part of the interview process. Help your interviewers allot time for it by including it in their interview invite, and save them from viewing feedback as an extra burden.
- 11. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #7 Automate interview feedback reminders How frustrating is it to send your interviewers one message after another, pleading with them to submit feedback? Instead, set up automated feedback reminders in your ATS.
- 12. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #8 Enforce a 24-hour feedback submission deadline Ingrain this rule in your interviewers’ minds during interview training, emphasize it in your interview kit, and reiterate it during your quarterly check- ins. Timely feedback helps you update and move your candidates through their process more quickly.
- 13. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #9 Give a gift card to the interviewer with the fastest feedback submission throughout each process Everyone is motivated by gift cards, right? Encourage your interviewers to log their feedback at record speed by rewarding the person who does it the fastest. You should be able to measure this right in your ATS!
- 14. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #10 Standardize 4-point ratings instead of 5 Don’t give interviewers a “neutral” or “middle” option - they may just sit on the fence. Instead, ask them to form an opinion. At Lever, we use the following categories: “1: Strong no hire”, “2: No hire”, “3: Hire”, and “4: Strong hire”.
- 15. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #11 Increase your technical interview efficiency with coding challenges Evaluate candidates on their performance rather than experience, and you’ll hire better and reduce interview bias. Try using coding-based assessment platforms like HackerRank and Codefights.
- 16. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #12 Schedule a retrospective with all interviewers once you hire a hard-to-fill role Debriefs can sometimes be stressful or time-consuming. Structure your post mortem right, however, and it’ll save you time on your next candidate search. Ask questions like: ‘What went well in the process?’, ‘What went wrong?’.
- 17. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #13 Spotlight new hires at company-wide meetings Take your whole team behind the hiring scenes by sharing facts about new hires’ interview processes before they join. Talk about their background, how they’ll impact the team, and what you learned in the process.
- 18. Closing Part 3 —Interviewing and closing
- 19. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #14 Mail your candidate your snazziest company swag To woo your candidate, surprise them. By sending them branded gear - like a cozy sweatshirt or socks - you’re relaying the message that you really want them to be a team member.
- 20. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #15 Collect and permanently log candidate compensation data While it’s illegal in some regions to ask candidates about current compensation, you should still meticulously track information like your candidate’s expected compensation and their competitive offer details, all in one place.
- 21. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #16 Use one simple tool to conduct background checks Background checks may be uninspiring, but they’re a necessary step in the interview process. With tools like GoodHire and Checkr, you can screen employees with exceptional speed and accuracy. Not only are these tools intuitive for the company, but they’re optimized for candidates as well.
- 22. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #17 Send a welcome email to new employees, GIF included Here at Lever, our recruiting team sends every new hire an email with a GIF of their future team cheering excitedly. And here’s the bonus: they include the entire company in the email. Then, every Leveroo responds with a welcome email of their own. This can be a closing strategy too!
- 23. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #18 Uncover your candidate’s favorite hobby, and send them a photo of your whole team performing it You can always give a big boost to your close with thoughtful gifts or gestures. Say your candidate’s favorite hobby is dancing - think about how much they’ll love a video of your team in a dance battle.
- 24. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #19 Send candidates a custom mug with their potential employee number If you keep track of employee numbers on your team - i.e. the 33rd person to join your team is employee #33 - this gesture could be particularly meaningful. Send them something thoughtful and everlasting like a mug that reads “#45”.
- 25. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #20 Create a video saying “We want you!” Make an easy video for candidates you want to join. It’s a personalized, light- hearted, and simple way to show amazing talent that they’re special. Our message is: we want you more than the other teams you’re considering, and we’re doing everything we can to make that clear.
- 26. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #21 Call to close - don’t email Conversations are always more meaningful over the phone than by email. You can clear up any questions, hear the emotion in your candidate’s voice, and convey your excitement way more easily.
- 27. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #22 Easily send offer approvals to hiring managers when filling out your offer template Worry no longer about emailing your candidate’s future manager an approval form to fill out, or having to drop it on their desk. In Lever, sending that offer approval form is a step in creating your candidate offer letter.
- 28. Part 3 —Interviewing and closing #23 Ask candidates to write their favorite snack on your interview sign-in sheet, and send it to them When your candidate signs in for their final interview, have a box on the form that asks them for their favorite snack. That way, if you decide to send them a gift that shows that you’re thinking of them, you can mail their favorite one!
- 29. Download our entire103 Recruiting Hacks Ebook here: https://www.lever.co/resources/101-recruiting-hacks-to-accelerate-hiring
- 30. Register for our4-part webinar series: https://www.lever.co/recruiting-resources/webinars/103-recruiting-hacks-to- make-2018-your-most-productive-year-yet
- 31. Questions? Mollie Bassett Sales Recruiter,Lever Ashley Kelly Director of Sales Development, Lever Part 3 — Interviewing and closing
Editor's Notes
- #6 This makes scheduling phone interviews so much easier! Eliminates the back and forth of finding a time that works for both parties. Lever allows you to create a template with your easy book link. Once you have a candidate you’re ready to chat with you just shoot them a quick email and they are able to easily find a time that works best for them on your calendar. Bonus: The interviewer and candidate will both receive a calendar invite once the time is booked.
- #7 There’s a lot of information you’ll want to share with interviewers about how to effectively interview for your open role. Last year Ashley and I did a LOT of interviews for our Sales Development team :) We found it best for our process to create a specific set of questions for each interviewer - this would include the questions they would be asking and a reminder of the criteria we were evaluating for this particular role. Providing this “cheat sheet” helps the interviewer come to each interview prepared with what to look for and what they will be asking - helps to ensure candidates aren’t being asked the same question by multiple interviewers
- #8 Last year we were training up quite a few new interviewers across different teams within the company. We held group interview trainings for each team. We then did regular individual check ins with new interviewers to go over their interview stats (you can pull really useful interviewer stats in Lever) and helped work with them on interviewing skills they wanted to improve As recruiters we feel it’s our job to continue to check in on interviewers and review feedback. This helps to make sure we are still aligned on what criteria we are interviewing for and to help reduce unconscious bias
- #9 This is super helpful because not only are your interviewers going to be evaluating the candidates, but the candidates are going to be evaluating if your particular company and that specific role is going to be right for them. The interviewer needs to be trained on how to sell the candidate so bringing a sales leader into your interviewer training can help them uncover tips of how to really get the candidate excited about joining your company
- #10 We talked a little bit about this in hack 2 - providing specific sets of interview questions so the candidate isn’t answering the same questions multiple times is super duper important to providing a great candidate experience and getting a well rounded view of your candidate. Within the scorecard we lay out the specific criteria we’re looking for and each question is designed to evaluate for those criteria. Creating these hiring kits and scorecards makes it super simple for interviewers to submit feedback
- #11 Not to toot our own horn but i’ve found here at Lever that our interviewers are so involved and excited about the process that we don’t have much of an issue with getting feedback in on time - Lever also helps remind people to submit it! But I have found that blocking of time for an interview directly after the interview can really help ensure that their feedback gets entered ASAP + the closer you submit feedback after the interview the fresher it is in your mind - more accurate This is especially useful if you know your candidate has a tight timeline and you need to provide them feedback ASAP
- #12 Setting up feedback reminders that will send an email to the interviewer is really helpful - the email will provide a link that directs you right to the feedback form. You can customize these to remind you as frequently as desired. This truly helps me when I have a busy day of candidate calls and haven’t been able to submit feedback immediately after each call Our Slack integration also allows you to create an automated reminder with Slack! You Bonus: Your interviewers will receive emails that don’t have your name on them, and you don’t have to be the bad guy.
- #13 It’s really helpful to set the standard from the beginning - creating this ‘rule’ helps hold people accountable. Also, like I mentioned in the previous slide our product does a great job of reminding interviewers as well AK - do you feel like those reminders help you to submit feedback for your interviews?
- #14 Everyone loves a free gift card! This can help incentivize your interviewers. With Lever you can pull reports on your interviewers feedback data. Rewarding the fastest feedbacks adds some healthy competition :)
- #15 This is super important! If you provide an option for an interviewer to submit a neutral score, they will. Using a 4 point rating system encourages interviewers to come to an actual decision on the candidate. If you are creating strong interview kits, you should encourage your interviewers to trust their own opinions and know that they are interviewing based on the criteria that they have decided will make someone truly successful in that particular role
- #16 This tip isn’t as particularly relevant to the work AK and I do because we focus on hiring Sales Reps. However, our engineering teams do include a coding challenge and this is a great way to truly evaluate someone's skill set without bias. Most organizations i’ve worked in have included a technical coding challenge for most technical roles One tip here is that it’s important to continue to check in on your challenge as time passes. You want to make sure you’re evaluating your candidates on skills that are still relevant for the job they would be performing
- #17 More questions include: , ‘How could we have filled the role more quickly?’, and ‘Where could we have found more qualified candidates?’. Something we do here at Lever is continue to iterate and improve our hiring processes. Scheduling time to talk about best practices and how you can improve the next time will actually save you time when you kick of your next hard to fill role
- #18 At Lever, we like to share the ‘turning point’ - the moment when the balance tipped in favor of the candidate joining the company - to help us recruit better in future. It can be fun to share interesting hiring stories about new hires before they join. Each candidate has a unique story! Now that we’re growing at such a fast pace, we actually like to share fun facts about the person on their first day. During our Monday meeting AK will get up in front of the group with the new hire and share a fun fact about them. This gives the entire company a chance to learn a little something about our new Leveroos. It’s actually really fun and a great welcoming for the new person because the entire company cheers and gets very excited!
- #20 We like to send swag after we’ve extended an offer! Or sometimes sending some doughbies does the trick as well :)
- #21 First, it will set your team up to give your candidate the most appropriate, competitive offer. Second, you’ll be able to use this data to inform how you compensate future candidates for the same role.
- #22 Not only are these tools intuitive for the company, but they’re optimized for candidates as well. We use Checkr here and it’s super seamless as it integrates with Lever!
- #23 Even if your candidate hasn’t yet said yes, you can still send them an email with a GIF and ask your team members to reply expressing their excitement. This was one of my favorite things about joining Lever! When I received my welcome email after I signed my offer it just solidified to me that I made the right decision. This is such an important part of our process and I know I have a great time filming them :)
- #25 That way, they know that you’re already reserving that spot for them.
- #26 So the welcome gif is something we do AFTER they accept but this is great way to add a personal touch while you are waiting for the candidate to accept. This shows the candidate how important they are to your team and how excited you are for the opportunity to work with them
- #27 It’s simple, but crucial. Pick up the phone every time you’re speaking to a candidate you’re pumped about. Email just won’t cut it.