Beyond the Résumé: Practical Steps to Crafting a Winning Interview Process

Layout your interview process to help choose the right fit for your role.

In our last post, we explored how a highly structured interview process can transform your hiring, moving beyond gut feelings to objectively identify the best candidates. Now, let's dive into the nuts and bolts—the actionable steps you can take to set up an interview process that truly finds the right fit for your team.

Step 1: Design Your Interview Scorecard

Before you even think about posting a job, you need to define what success looks like in that role. This isn't just about tasks; it's about the essential strengths, qualities, and talents a person needs to thrive.

• Review the Job Description: An open position is a golden opportunity to refresh and refine the role. Does it still align with your team's current needs and future direction?

• Identify Core Characteristics: Think deeply about the specific demands of the role.

  • For a Registration or Financial Aid position, you might prioritize an exceptional eye for detail and a love for processes.

  • For Outreach or Student Engagement, flexibility, a knack for connecting with people, and an eagerness to engage are key.

• Include "Culture Fit" (Thoughtfully!): I often incorporate elements from Patrick Lencioni's "The Ideal Team Player"—looking for candidates who are Humble (team-oriented), Hungry (driven), and Smart (good with people). Adapt this to your own team's values.

  
  

Your takeaway: Don't just copy. Create a tailored "scorecard" or evaluation criteria based on the unique needs of your role. This scorecard becomes your blueprint for assessing candidates.

Step 2: Assemble Your Interview Committee & Timeline

Your committee is critical for bringing diverse perspectives and mitigating bias.

• Select Diverse Stakeholders: Include representatives from different areas—academics, classified staff, and relevant partners. A diverse committee offers a richer understanding of candidates.

• Communicate the Full Timeline: When inviting committee members, provide all interview dates and times upfront. This ensures they can commit to the entire process.

• Address Conflicts of Interest: In smaller organizations, committee members might know candidates. Emphasize the importance of objective evaluation over personal relationships.

My typical process: I usually plan for two rounds of interviews with three "cuts."

1. Application Review: Initial screen of all applications.

2. First Round (Virtual/Phone): Narrow down to fewer than seven candidates.

3. Final Round (In-Person): Select two or three top candidates for the final interview.

Step 3: Craft Your Interview Questions

Your questions should directly align with your evaluation scorecard.

• Develop Scorecard-Based Questions: Design questions that probe the specific characteristics you identified. I even note the topic each question is designed to assess next to it.

• Focus on Specific Examples: Instead of theoretical answers, ask candidates to provide concrete examples or walk you through scenarios. "Tell me about a time when..." reveals what they've actually done, not just what they say they'd do.

• Provide Questions in Advance: This is a game-changer! Give candidates the questions before the interview, ensuring everyone has the same amount of preparation time. Most jobs don't require instant, on-the-spot answers. This approach allows candidates to reflect and provide their most thoughtful, real-world examples, leading to a much richer evaluation.

Step 4: Streamline Candidate Communication

Remember, candidates are interviewing you just as much as you're interviewing them! A professional, organized process reflects positively on your organization.

• Maintain Professionalism: All communications, especially for final interviews, should be clear, detailed, and on professional letterhead. Provide all necessary information: where to go, what the day entails, and any presentation requirements.

• Leverage Scheduling Tools: Tools like Calendly can be incredibly helpful for coordinating first-round interviews, saving you from endless email chains and phone tag with multiple candidates and committee members.

Step 5: Incorporate Practical Activities (Presentations, Challenges)

While not every role demands frequent presentations, incorporating an activity can be incredibly revealing.

• Design a Relevant Activity: Ask candidates to present on a relevant topic or complete a task that mirrors aspects of the job. For an Outreach Director role, I might ask them to discuss how they would develop, execute, and assess a recruitment plan, rather than creating a full plan on the spot.

• Gain Deeper Insight: These activities provide fantastic insight into a candidate's thought process, problem-solving skills, resourcefulness, and whether their past experiences have truly prepared them for the role. Often, these are the most revealing parts of the interview.

Setting up a robust interview process takes effort, but it's an investment that pays off immensely. By being intentional about your scorecard, committee, questions, communication, and activities, you'll be well on your way to making confident, successful hires.

There's more resources at Cultivate Rural Community College Leaders to help.

1. Check out the Open Educational Resources at the bottom of the Management Training Page.

2. Listen to Andy talk about setting up interviews in this video.

   
   

What's one practical step you're going to implement in your next interview process?