How to interview to hire great people

The most random fact I have ever heard about interviewing candidates…..

If an interviewer is more than 5 minutes late starting the interview they are 20% MORE LIKELY to progress the candidate to the next stage of the interview process. 🤔

This was one of the many interesting facts shared in a webinar I attended recently hosted by interview platform provider BrightHire where they discussed insights gained from analysing over 1 million interviews held on their platform.

So interviewer guilt is a selection factor now. As if interviewer bias wasn’t tricky enough to manage.

Should we now add the “lateness effect” ⏰ to the ever-increasing list of reasons why your organisation’s interviewers need be trained on how to objectively assess candidates?

We discussed interviewer bias and and lots more when we met with members of Shannon Chamber of Commerce recently. We shared how organisations can design a structured interview process to maximise their chances of hiring and keeping great people.

How to interview to hire great people – key takeaways:

📌 Identify what criteria you are looking for from your candidates and STICK to them – design and use a candidate scorecard. Link it directly to the job you are hiring for. One size does not fit all.

📌 Have a question plan to avoid CV-led unstructured questioning. Include a mixture of open and closed questions. Be consistent across candidates when asking questions. It makes it easier to compare candidates

📌 Don’t take candidate answers at face value (hello ChatGPT 👋). Know how to probe for more evidence

📌 Check your bias and blind spot – it’s always lurking. Sometimes your gut feeling will let you down. Over 85% of interviewer admit that they have made a bad hire at some stage. Use your candidate scorecard to stay objective

📌 Be ready to sell your organisation to the candidate.


Hilt makes interviews work for organisations and for candidates. We help you and your team to design an interview process that will lead to hiring success

Contact us to find out how we do it