THE KEY TO the excellent interviewing process is what I call the Law of Three. This law says that you should look at a minimum of three good candidates, interview the one you like best a minimum of three times, and interview that person in at least three different settings or locations.
When you are interviewing for any job, always speak to a minimum of three people. Don’t get stuck on the very first one, no matter how good that candidate appears at that initial interview.
One of my rules is that “job candidates will never look better in their lives than on the first interview.”
It is at the first interview that the candidate will impress you the most. If for some reason he does not impress you at the first meeting, he is not going to impress you later on.
If you really like the candidate, interview the person three times: first in your office, second down the hall in another space or over a coffee, and third out of the office over lunch. I have found that very often people who look terrific in the first interview may start to fade in the second interview, and by the third time you interview them you realize they are totally inappropriate.
A fourth application of the Law of Three is to have the job candidate interviewed by at least three other people. When I was a young business owner, I would meet a person and hire on the spot, if I liked the person. As a result, I made a lot of hiring mistakes that cost me an enormous amount of time, trouble, money, and even lawsuits. Then I decided not to rely on my own judgments. Instead, if I liked a person, I would introduce the person to another member of my staff in the next office and leave the two of them together to talk about the job, the business, and whatever other subjects came up.
My staff member would be aware of this process and, after a few minutes, take the person to the next office to chat someone else. Often, job candidates were interviewed by six or seven people in the office before they were thanked for their time and told that we would get in touch with them later.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) was famous for its “seven-part interview process.” Managers interviewed each candidate a minimum of seven times. Four different line managers interviewed the candidate; they represented the level of manager that this person would be working under. At the end of the process, after both individual and group interviews, these four managers came together and voted. The vote had to be unanimous. If one of the four managers was uncomfortable with the candidate, that person was passed over for the job.
The reason the company was so careful about the interview process was because it planned to hire people for life. Because of this philosophy, the turnover rates at Hewlett-Packard were some of the lowest in the high-tech industry for many years. (In 2015, HP announced a total of 84,000 layoffs due to dramatically changing market conditions.)
One of the top management consulting firms in New York has a process of hiring that includes a minimum of twenty-five interviews. As a result, the firm makes excellent hires. Its turnover rate is almost zero percent. The senior executives of the firm are involved in every final interview, even for a receptionist position. Because they are so careful about selection, they have people who have stayed with the firm for twenty, thirty, and forty years.
Nothing sorts out candidates better than a multiple interview process. If you don’t use a multiple interview process, you’re going to end up with people who were turned away by another company that more carefully screens employees using multiple interviews.
After the multiple interviews, bring everyone together to discuss the candidate. Often, people I thought looked very good turned out to be terrible choices. On one occasion, I almost hired a senior manager for a key job. But when the members of my staff had a chance to talk with him, they came back to me and were unanimously opposed to him having anything to do with our company.
Never rely solely on your own judgment. Involve as many other people as possible in the interviewing process. Have the person interviewed by at least three others whose opinions you respect.
Southwest Airlines is famous for its group interview process. The company invites a group of applicants to a meeting where the interviewer in charge asks the candidates a series of questions. These questions can be quite innocuous, such as:
“What is your favorite movie, and why?”
“Why do you want to work for this company?”
“What do you have to offer that would make you a good choice for this company?”
“What has been your most important experience in life, and how did it affect you?”
The purpose of this process is to get the candidates both talking and listening to the others. What the recruiters are looking for is not whether the answers are good or bad, but how the prospective candidates interact with each other. Do they smile, listen, applaud, and encourage the others when they are answering these questions, or do they just sit there waiting for their turn?
Southwest makes its final decision based on the interactive skills of the candidates, not the answers. It is a system that works very well for the company. What system do you use?
1. Plan out how to use the Law of Three the next time you hire someone, and follow your plan.
2. Consider interviewing candidates in groups to see how they interact with each other.