Please don’t meet the team — 4 big flaws of “meet the team” interviews, and what to do instead

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

The classic set-up of “meet the team” interviews lacks appreciation for the teams involved, leaves uncertainty in decision making and is a killer for diversity. idealo therefore introduced the so-called value interview, in order to move from gut feeling recruiting to profound hiring.

It is in our very nature that we wish to get along with our co-workers. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings. In Recruiting, “I think a candidate who is applying for a role at our company should meet their future teammates” sounds about right, doesn’t it?

However, the classic set-up of a “meet the team” interview is in many cases little to not at all appreciative or inclusive and most of all, it ties us to the very truth that recruiting is too often a matter of gut-feeling.

When a candidate applies for a job, they usually go through three interview steps — give or take:

1. The initial screening call: get a first impression of each other, discuss salary and mutual expectation management.
2. The technical/hard skills interview: discussing a task or case study in order to see if the candidate brings the work experience and skills for their future responsibilities.
3. The “meet the team” interview: the candidate, well, meets the team.

According to this process, which might look familiar to many, a candidate has been thoroughly assessed technically, in their skills and work experience and has probably talked to at least four people. As a final step, they get to “meet the team”. But what exactly is the team supposed to do? What is left for them to ask even? With no clear agenda or set questions, the team is asking “whatever they wish to know about their future colleague”. In deliberation rounds after the interview, in which the team discusses if they see the candidate fit for the role, feedback usually starts like this:

• “She was really nice”
• “I don’t like that she was five minutes late.”
• “He talks a lot, so I don’t know if he is able to get to the point quickly when needed.”
• “She plays the piano; she must be quite smart”.

Evidently, there is little to no outcome that would help clarify if a candidate was an actual fit for the role or not. Most team members share their personal impression, deriving from answers to unsorted, random, unrelated questions to the candidate.

So, a typical “meet the team” interview is flawed in those four ways:

1. No appreciation for the team: the candidate has been assessed already, there is little to no chance for a veto from the respective team members since the decision has more or less been made already by the Hiring Manager in the previous interviews.
2. Uncertainty for inexperienced team members: many people are not used to being the interviewer and might be overwhelmed by thinking of and asking their own questions in interviews. Let alone our introverted colleagues who did not sign up for such a task to begin with.
3. The Results are incomparable: without any metrics or a base off of which questions are being asked, all the weightless answers the team gets will vanish into thin air, leaving nothing but a gut-feeling.
4. They’re a killer for diversity: In this set-up, we are likely to vote for a person we literally like. Maybe we can relate to their personal story or perspective; maybe they just watch the same movies and series we do. Either way, there is no room for diversity of thought or experience — let alone a possibility for necessary friction and challenge with each other.

Photo by Yoav Hornung on Unsplash

At idealo, we introduced a so-called “value interview”. The basis of this are our core philosophy: freedom, trust, responsibility and our core values: openness, integrity and tolerance, all manifested in our idealo company codex. These values can be made visible through questions that reveal whether a candidate is able to comply with those.

For example: in order to understand, if a candidate understands the concept of freedom at the workplace, we ask them: “At idealo we’re offering trainings regarding the topic ‘Saying No’ — What’s your opinion on this?”

Candidates will then reveal how they set themselves up for success: are they able to work in freedom and full flexibility? Have they even worked in a flexible work mode? And how do they set boundaries?

The respective team members are involved in the value interview and choose the questions they would wish to ask. That way, everyone is equipped with a variety of related questions, that measure up to one of the six aspects of the idealo codex. In the end, the results are transferred into a scale from 1 (candidate did not meet our expectations) to 4 (candidate meets our idea of the value completely).

The benefits of a set-up like this are:

• The team is being integrated into the process with full accountability and responsibility.
• The team feels more secure and is guided through the interview, still leaving them the freedom to choose from a variety of questions.
• The results are translated into a scale to eventually be able to compare how each candidate scored.
• There is less bias and more openness for different ideas and perspectives since what we are asking about are values and a work ethic or philosophy. Each candidate can still bring individual interests and experiences.

Does the value interview erase gut-feeling recruiting? Probably not. Emotions and gut-feeling will always be part of Recruiting. The value interview does, however, emphasize how a candidate’s time and the time the team spends on interviews can be appreciated more. Those standardized versions of interviews also support less biased decision-making in hiring and allow the team to find a person who fits — but for a set of well-defined reasons.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the question of who is supposed to make a hiring decision in the first place: A Hiring Manager? A Recruiter? Or a team? What’s your opinion on this?

Want to learn more about at idealo? Check out our career website.