10 Steps to Guarantee a Terrible Hiring Process
Interviewing for a new role tends be a pretty not-great experience. I’ve had the pleasure (or misfortune, depending your take) of being a candidate several times, as well as being an interviewer of hundreds of candidates. Over that time span, I’ve developed a few opinions and perspectives on the hiring process. I’ve made great hires, I’ve made disastrous hires, and I’ve hired folks who, after a few months, say, “This is not the place I thought it was.” To help share some of my knowledge, I thought I’d write some helpful tips on how to guarantee a terrible hiring process. So, in no particular order, here are my recommendations!
1. Make sure the Candidate knows you’re smarter than they are.
When you’re chatting with a potential candidate for a vacancy at your company, it’s critical that they know how great you and your team are, and that it’d be a privilege to work there. An easy way of doing this is to only ask questions that you have a pre-defined acceptable answer for. For added effectiveness, make sure to interrupt their clearly wrong answer and share what the acceptable answer would have been. This will go a long way to establishing yourself as the expert, as well as rattle the candidate for the rest of the interview.
2. Ask brain teasers or tricky questions unrelated to the job.
You only have 30 or so minutes on a phone screen, so be sure to ask questions that will take up a lot of time and provide little insight into the candidate or the position. If you’re really clever, these questions can also satisfy the requirement for Tip 1 up above!
3. Be fashionably late
It’s critical that the candidate knows you’re a busy person and that they’re lucky to get to speak with you. Be sure to call them 3–7 minutes late for a phone screen, or leave them hanging in the waiting area of an onsite interview for about 10 minutes. That’ll really add to the anxiety! Bonus tip: make sure to remind the candidate that you have a hard stop at some arbitrary time. You don’t want them to think they get more time to make a positive impression!
4. Don’t standardize the interview process
Allow every interview to be totally different, even for the same role. If you have too much consistency, you’ll start to be able to compare candidates directly on merit, and your interviewers will become too good. More importantly, if you allow each interview to have their own set of criteria, you’ll ensure you get a diverse mix of talent and traits in candidates that get hired. Standardize things, and you run the risk of only hiring qualified applicants that will fit in to the company and fulfill the job needs.
5. Don’t provide any information about yourself
People tend to make job choices for a variety of reasons, teammates being one of them. Under no circumstances should you give any hints about your background, why you came to the company, some of your thoughts or beliefs, basically anything that makes it seem like you’re a human being. You don’t want the candidate to pull out of the process (or get too excited) because of the personalities at your company.
6. Don’t let the candidate ask any questions
When you give the candidate a chance to ask a question, you’re giving away your leverage. You don’t want the candidate to decide that your company isn’t a fit for them, that’s your job. By inviting questions, you risk losing the power position in the negotiations. Only share the information you want disclosed. Feel free to start the interview by telling them there will be time for questions, but be sure to wait until 30 seconds before your “hard stop.”
7. Speak about compensation in vague terms
It’s important to bring up compensation, but be sure to use phrases such as “depending on experience” and “market rate” rather than giving concrete ranges. You want to keep the candidate on their toes, and you don’t want to risk paying them more than you need to. It is important, though, to ask them about their salary expectations. When they respond, be sure to follow up with something like, “We have a great culture and some rockin’ benefits here, would that help offset some of the salary if we can’t hit your number?” This type of statement sets you up to offer them less than they’re asking for, no matter what!
8. Make sure the onsite interview is nothing like the day-to-day job
You convinced the candidate to take a sick or vacation day and come in for an interview. Congratulations! Now that you have them there, you can really run them through the ringer. To make the most of your time, be sure the exercises the candidate performs are totally different than what the job would be. Are they going to be working in a team? Give them a bunch of solo work in a glass room. Are they going to be writing code? Ask them hypothetical white board problems all day. Don’t let them get a good sense of the rest of the office, keep them confined in a space tucked away from the good stuff so there’s a healthy sense of mystery about what this job really is. By the end of the day, you’ve exhausted them, seen what you wanted to see, and gave them little indication of whether or not they’ll like working there. Score!
9. Take your sweet time following up
I find it most effective to wait multiple weeks between each step of the hiring process. This makes sure the candidate doesn’t get too confident in their performance, or too bold when negotiating working agreements. When you move quickly, you give the impression that they were either really great or you have an urgent need, both of which give the candidate too much leverage. Let them know they aren’t that important, but send out “feeler” emails to “keep them warm” while you work on ways to justify an offer for less than they’re worth.
10. Don’t let them know they didn’t get the job
The final nail in the coffin: Be sure to not provide any feedback after the last step of the process if you aren’t going to make an offer. You’ll want to leave the results shrouded in mystery. It’d be a disaster if they could learn from their performance to get better, or even worse, if they shared the feedback with other candidates to help them perform better. Another benefit of leaving them hanging? Let’s say that other candidate rejects you, you can just call this person up and offer the job, apologizing for the delay. They’ll never know they were second (or third, or fourth…) choice!
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, it’s obvious that this is satire. Please don’t do any of these, and if you are doing these, please stop.
