When hiring a new candidate, it’s difficult to strike the right balance between deciding quickly so he doesn’t lose interest and interviewing him thoroughly enough that you’re confident in your decision. You want to make sure you’ve investigated every potential problem, of course, but too many interviews can be a very bad thing for your candidate and for your company.
It’s bad for the candidate:
- If your candidate is currently employed, slipping away during office hours for an interview is stressful and takes careful planning. Having to do it two or three times is even more difficult, and could possibly put their job at risk.
- A candidate can’t work and interview at the same time, so if your candidate is currently employed and not on salary, they lose working hours coming to speak to you. That’s money that’s coming out of their paycheck every time you schedule an interview.
- It’s stressful waiting for an interview, no matter how prepared or how confident the candidate. It’s stressful waiting after an interview, too, so the more interviews a candidate has to go through, the more stress they have to deal with.
It’s bad for the company:
- Too many interviews waste valuable company time. Research has shown that high-level executive positions need about three rounds of interviews to be filled. One interview, however, is probably enough for most jobs.
- It’s difficult to streamline an interview process that happens over a long period of time. If the same questions are being asked in each interview, if a candidate has to go over their resume more than once, it makes your office look disorganized.
- Candidates prepare for interviews, but ultimately they answer questions spontaneously. A candidate may say two things that entirely contradict each other in two different interviews. This creates confusion for you because you have to figure out a way to weigh both responses and still make a judgment call about whether or not to hire them.
Interviewing is an imperfect process with no guarantees. If you’re afraid of hiring, holding more interviews won’t help you make your choice. Instead, get in touch with one of our specialists at Burnett’s Staffing and let us guide you through the hiring process. We’ve been helping companies find the best talent in the Dallas-Fort Worth area since 1966, and we’d love to put our experience to work for you!