Not only can long, tedious screening processes slow down your hiring speed and make candidates more likely to take other offers, they can also end up insulting the candidates you want to attract. To avoid turning off candidates, your interview process should be clear, brief and to the point, with no unnecessary processes or trick questions.
One surefire way to insult an executive candidate is to place too much emphasis on pre-determined eligibility criteria. If candidates suit your needs in all other ways except that they haven't spent 15 years in your particular industry, for example, grilling the candidates about the fact that they don't have this qualification will only make them think you doubt their competence as an executive.
Another way that you might unintentionally offend a candidate is by having them wait too long for correspondence about how the selection process is going. Candidates expect to be kept up to speed on where they are in the process and what they can expect from you next. Not hearing from you for a while may make them think you've chosen someone else without letting them know.
Finally, don't spring group interviews or written assessments on candidates without letting them know first. This can rattle a candidate who would have done well if given time to prepare beforehand. According to Inc. Magazine Contributing Editor Jeff Haden, "you rarely get the candidate's best [in a group interview], and then it's easy for the interview team to fall into the group consensus black hole where everyone gravitates towards the same opinion."
This is all more important in a candidates' market where the best candidates are in high demand. In addition, passive candidates can be turned off when they have to fill out lots of boxes and long questionnaires, after all – they are NOT looking! EJ Dieterle, CEO of YES Partners, adds that "especially Executives expect to meet and interview with a other Executives or C-level persons, not an Admin or HR person". For a CEO to make time available to meet a potential candidates demonstrates the company's interest in that person, and can make the difference whether the person joins or not.
Finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is not. YES Partners helps companies FIND the right people – for all company functions, across many industries and globally.
