Any organization would have a mixed bag of employees, the social guy, the interview services, the technical geek, the managerial fellow, and many more.
Is ever a thought given to the person who interviews, while scheduling an interview?
Of course, their availability is considered; in most cases, the primary criteria are ONLY availability, the organization demands the interviewer to make themself available. The comfort level of the interviewer for conducting an interview services is never the question in the picture.
If a socially awkward technical geek takes an interview, he would have a lot of tricky and mastery questions under their sleeve; but would be unable to build a rapport with the opposite person. He would not make the interviewee comfortable with his presence to interact. He would not read the body language of the person. So he would not make an effective interviewer.
In the same way, a bare minimum competent-socially freaky guy would make his presence very comfortable; but to what extent he would evaluate the technical competency is again a big question mark. His interview would be more of a personal interview rather than technical.
These are just a few of the traits, an interviewer may be of any kind. All of them are not ideal ones for being an interviewer.
Evaluation of the person evaluating is the primary decree of any interview
But who has time for all those in a company?
Any activity that cannot be accomplished effectively by the internal sources must be outsourced to the specialists.
For an HR of an organization with a few hundred employees, the internal interviewer is just a name, with no image of his character.
Only the right ingredients in the right proportions make a perfect dish.
And only a person with culinary skills can sense it.
To make things more relatable and understand the gravity of the situation. Let’s imagine our few favorite characters take an interview.
An imaginary episode of BBT in which all the characters take an interview services for an assistant of theirs.
After firing Alex, the Caltech research assistant; Sheldon is in search of a new assistant. HR has sent him the CV of six prospective candidates. Sheldon must screen their profiles before he schedules the online interview. He must finalize the assistant within a week. Sheldon doesn’t want to miss the Comic-Con event on that weekend. So, he avoids scheduling interviews on the weekend. He has just four days left. He wants to devote all his time in the university working time to super asymmetric theory. So, he decides to conduct the interviews during weekday evenings.
Sheldon goes through the CV. Without a second glance, he rejects two profiles irrespective of their accolades and achievements because they were mere engineers (!!). He believes engineers can never be as best as a physicist (prejudice).
Sacrificing his game night, ‘dungeons & dragons’ appointments in the week, He fixes four others for an online interview.
During the interview services, Sheldon tries to prove that he is the smartest, the interviewees feel uncomfortable as Sheldon loves telling people they are wrong. He displays no empathy in that. He takes four interviews, but 2 of them hung half the way as they felt he was constantly humiliating them. But Sheldon wasn’t aware of that. (Being the worst judge of human behaviour). If the candidate happens to answer the question, he shot more questions till they gave up. Sheldon was satisfied in showing that he was superior. So, he did not end up the right candidate. He never had the eyes to search for the right one, though he was technically super competent.
He was never the material for an interviewer. But he wasn’t evaluated on those grounds (In fact, he was never assessed). He needed resources, so he had to choose them.
The maximum criteria of an interviewer as per the organization are
- At least 4-5 years of experience (in some cases even team members with three years’ experience take interview.)
- Their engagement with the project which requested resource
- Their Availability
Rest assured, no one sees the social skills of an interviewer.
Social intelligence plays an
Important role while taking an interview.
The ideal scenario: Sheldon lists out his specific requirement in detail, outsources it to a team that specializes in it.
Who would say ‘No’ to a service in which you give the list of prospective candidates and get back the list ranked in order rated by a subject matter interview expert? The organization has to create a seat for the new entrant!!!
And now, what would happen if Penny was to interview and hire a resource?
To be continued.
