By David Wolfe
Once you have completed your phone interviews and narrowed down your search to the 3-5 really good candidates, it’s time to start separating the best from the rest.
I believe in group interviews. Have the candidates meet formally with at least two and preferably three other people in a group setting. The simple reason for that is that other interviewers will see things that you can’t see. Your fellow interviewers have different minds and different personalities, and they’re going to pick up on things you didn’t pick up on.
As a group, you will be able to look at a candidate from different angles, whereas if you do it by yourself you only get one angle. Whoever those two or three people are, you must make sure that those are the same people that interview the next candidate and the next candidate. Then, after you’ve interviewed all the candidates, you can sit down and really compare notes on who the ideal person for the position was and who has exactly what you want.
What should you look for when you’re looking to fill out your interview group? They could either be fellow workers in your HR department, or from executive leadership, or other A-players on your team, or all the above. If you’re a small practice and you don’t have an HR team, or you don’t have an executive leadership team, then pick two of your top- performing A-players and have them sit in with you. They know what a team player and a high performer looks like, because they are one.
One trick I like is, at some point, after the candidate feels comfortable, you leave the room for a few minutes, so that the other two people can just talk to them and, hopefully, get the candidates to let their guard down a little bit. Then, come back in and ask them the following seven questions:
1. What metrics or numbers did you have to hit to know that you were winning in your role? (This can tell you whether they performed well and hit.)
2. Tell me about your proudest accomplishment and how you achieved (Was it something significant?)
3. Tell me about a failure. (Can they even admit they had one? Did they learn from it? How so?)
4. What did you like and dislike? (Does your position have the same things they disliked?)
5. How would you appraise your leader/ supervisor? (Will their new leader in your position have these same characteristics?)
6. When we call, what will your boss say about your strengths and weaker points, and how would your boss rate your overall performance, from one to five?
7. What are your reasons for leaving your current position? (Are they good reasons? Or is this candidate the real problem?)
With these seven questions, you’re looking for patterns, for consistencies from position to position. For instance, does your candidate learn from mistakes or do failures repeat themselves in many jobs? During the interview, you’re looking for how well they problem-solve, and if they learn from their mistakes. Also, how willing they are to admit their faults. That’s a big one. How humble are they in that they admit that they were wrong? How much of a team player are they?
When you’re asking all these questions, the true team player is a person who is really more about the team versus themselves. They’re humble and coachable. They’re driven. They’re people-smart. That’s really what you’re looking for. You only want to hire people that have all three of these characteristics (more to come on this): (1) they’re coachable, (2) they’re driven, and (3) they’re people-savvy.
I think one of the key questions is the last one: “How would your employer evaluate you, your strengths and weaknesses, and grade you on a scale of one to five?” I have found that the answer to that question will, 95 percent of the time, be the exact answer that you’ll get from their reference—as long as they know that you are going to check the reference. That’s why you want to preface it with, “I’m going to be checking references.” They’ll tell you because they know what the person’s going to say.
The theory on this is, if you have the luxury of several candidates to choose from, you will only want the candidates that graded themselves and were graded by the employer a four or a five in all their previous positions. Ideally, if you go through their last four positions and they graded themselves a four or five and their boss or supervisor verified that, those are who you want. It’s the people who are twos and threes who are typically lower performers.
After these three steps, it’s time to dig a little deeper and learn more about the one or two candidates you think make the best match. The next three steps help you do that, with a standardized personal assessment, an unusual interview, and a closer look at the candidate at work.
Another great way to conduct an onsite interview, which we have only seen a few health systems do, is to have the candidate interview individually and separately with each member of the team. For example, they will have the NP interview and/or shadow with one MD for twenty to thirty minutes, then spend some time with the director of nursing, then the CEO, then a social worker. After the candidate meets with four to six people on the team, each team member fills out an evaluation card on the candidate completely separately from each other. This is done so each person forms their own unique opinion without outside influence. Then the team comes together and compare notes and decides on where the candidate is strongest and weakest.