How to train and calibrate interviewers

Interviewers are incredibly important. They determine the quality of the interview and evaluation, the candidate’s decision whether to accept an offer or not, and whether they would recommend your company to others.

4 steps to training and calibrating interviewers

• Step 1: Understand what makes a good interviewer
• Step 2: Practice with other interviewers
• Step 3: Shadow interview
• Step 4: Reverse shadow​

Step 1: Understand what makes a good interviewer 

A good interviewer:

• Possesses interpersonal skills that leaves the candidate feeling great about the company.
• Focuses on keeping interviewees relaxed, not on impressing or intimidating them.
• Keeps the tone relaxed, friendly, and positive with normal reactions (e.g., eye contact, head nods).
• Comes prepared.
• Understands how to ask questions and prompts to pull for the right information.
• Does not probe for prohibited information.
• Provide meaningful feedback to the hiring committee.
• Understands how bias can impact evaluations.

Step 2: Practice with other interviewers

The goal is to ensure everyone is conducting quality interviews and evaluating similarly to each other.

• Get interviewers together and review the job criteria, questions, and rating rubric.
• Have everyone play the ‘interviewer’ and the ‘interviewee.
• Observers provide the ‘interviewer’ with feedback.

Practice evaluating.

• Have everyone rate each candidate on each criterion independently before discussing and comparing discrepancies with the group. Use the rating rubrics and provide justifications.
• Take notes and rate the “candidate” using the rating rubric.
• Review and rate previous anonymous candidate packets (of those not working at your company).
• Review examples of good and bad examples.
  

Tips for the interviewer.

• If the interviewee doesn’t understand the question. Kindly let them know and reframe the question. If this doesn’t help, probe further or move on.
• If the interviewee is not doing well. Gently give a hint to get them on track or guide the conversation to a different question.  Be consistent across all candidates.
• Keep the experience positive. Don’t let them know if they are not doing well.  
• If the candidate is taking too long on a question. Gently switch topics by saying, “To ensure we have time for the remaining questions, why don’t we move on to a different topic? We can revisit this if you would like at the end.”

Step 3: Shadow interview

New interviewers shadow more experienced interviewers for at least 2-3 interviews. During the interview, shadowers:

• Sit quietly and observe.
• Take notes and practice filling out a rating rubric for each criteria being assessed. Include justifications.
• After the interview, the interviewer and shadower debrief and compare and discuss ratings.
• Do not submit the shadower’s ratings to the hiring committee.

Step 4: Reverse shadow

Before the interview: the new and experienced interviewer go over the interview. During the interview:

• The new interviewer leads.
• The experienced interviewer sits quietly and observes (but should jump in if the interview goes off track).

After the interview:

• Both interviewers independently fill in rating rubrics to submit to the hiring committee.
• The experienced interviewer provides feedback to the new interviewer regarding the quality of the interview.
• They compare rating rubric scores and justifications and discuss discrepancies.

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