If you’ve ever had to hire someone, you know what it feels like when you have gone through dozens of resumes, and there is one clear candidate that you cannot wait to meet. He or she has the perfect qualifications, relevant industry experience, and no strange gaps in their employment history. You can barely contain your excitement after you have a great phone interview with the candidate, and book the in person interview. Except, after you have the in person interview you’re feeling, meh. What do you do next?
Remember, it’s a first date… in a way
We’ve all had that first date that didn’t go as well as we thought it would. This interview could be just a one off, bad “first date.” The candidate could have been nervous, you could have been nervous, or you had such high expectations that this person would be “the one,” that no matter what the candidate said, did, or wore, he or she never would have been able to live up to the story you created about them in your mind.
Don’t rush into deciding that they’re not “the one” based on one less-than-perfect interview. Your candidate likely was not expecting an offer on the spot, so he or she will be excited when you call to ask for a second “date.” After all, according to dice.com, only about 50% of interviews turn into job offers. In your next interview, try to ask questions to address what is making you feel unsure about the candidate. Was it the way they talked about former supervisors that worried you, or the fact that their resume made it seem like their experience was more broad than what the candidate told you about in the interview? Dig into whatever is making you feel uneasy about your first interview.
Listen to your gut
Alternatively, perhaps there is another candidate that didn’t have the most impressive resume, but you clicked with during the interview. It’s hard to ignore your initial gut feeling about your top contender, but there’s a reason you’re doing in person interviews, right? People are so much more than their resumes, and a warm personality or positive attitude can go a long way in comparison to a perfect resume. Don’t let your preconceived unconscious bias lead you to ignore a great candidate. Likewise, don’t let a less-than-stellar first interview performance take your leading candidate out of the running.
You might be saying that you don’t have any unconscious biases. This is next to impossible. Unconscious biases as defined by the University of California- San Francisco are, “Social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one’s tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.”
Even if you’ve taken the Project Implicit test from Harvard University, and your results reflected your abnormally low tendency to judge a book by its cover, remember, you started your interview process with a leading contender, and that should cause you to pause and assess how objective you’re actually being.
Be aware – and consider your options
The entire point of getting through an interview process is to select the best candidate for the role, and you wouldn’t be the right person to make the decision on who to hire if you didn’t come to the situation with an idea of what you’re looking for in your next hire. However, being aware of what unconscious biases you’re bringing to the process may influence you to consider someone who doesn’t fit your preconceived notion of what the “perfect” candidate’s resume or experience looks like.
In a perfect world, the candidate with the best resume turns out to be your best interview, and every other candidate will have a lot to live up to. This scenario makes your decision pretty straightforward and uncomplicated. However, in the real world, hiring is rarely that simple, and can cause even the most seasoned hiring manager to lose sleep over their hiring choices. However, it’s not recommended to let one so-so interview drive your hiring choice, at least invite the candidate back for a “second date.” If there is no match after interview number two, move on with confidence.