Company Guidelines: Best Practices for Evaluating Candidates
Guidelines for Evaluating Candidates
• Avoid assessing candidates based on your feelings, emotions, or instincts.
• Try not making assumptions in the beginning of the interview; follow the plan to have concrete data on your final decision.
• Avoid using “culture fit” — use “culture add” instead. A “culture add” is someone who adds to the org’s existing culture by bringing new perspectives, experiences, and ideas, rather than simply fitting in with the current norms.
• Complete your feedback form with the questions and categories when evaluating candidates to ensure that candidates are assessed in the same way.
Best practices for candidate calibration meetings:
• Candidate calibrations are scheduled for after the last interview and include all members of the hiring team.
• Scorecards should be completed by all interviewers before the calibration meeting. This helps to deter bias.
• Hiring manager and team leads should be the last to speak in order to avoid group bias.
• Make comparisons between the candidate and the job description — avoid comparing candidates to each other.
Vocabulary:
Evaluating – judging, analyzing, or determining the quality, value, or significance of something, “The management team is currently evaluating the results of the new marketing strategy.”
assessing – evaluating, estimating, or measuring the nature, ability, or quality of someone or something, “The HR department spent the week assessing the performance of all new interns.”
instincts – natural, intuitive feelings or reactions rather than conscious reasoning or hard facts, “Instead of relying on your instincts, look closely at the financial reports to make a business decision.”
assumptions – things that are accepted as true or certain to happen, even though there is no actual proof, “Making assumptions about what a client wants without asking them directly can lead to huge mistakes.”
concrete data – solid, factual, and specific information or evidence that can be clearly proven or measured, “The team needs concrete data, like monthly sales figures, before launching the new ad campaign.”
culture fit – a traditional hiring concept where a candidate’s personality and values perfectly match the existing office environment and corporate habits, “Hiring only for culture fit can accidentally create a team where everyone thinks and acts exactly the same way.”
culture add – a modern hiring philosophy focusing on selecting candidates who bring unique perspectives, diverse backgrounds, and new ideas that enrich and expand the company’s culture, “We looked for a culture add who could bring international experience to our local creative team.”
perspectives – particular attitudes or ways of regarding situations; points of view, “Inviting employees from different departments brought many valuable perspectives to the project meeting.”
norms – standard rules, behaviors, or expectations that are socially enforced within a specific group, office, or society, “Arriving five minutes early to every meeting is one of the standard workplace norms at this firm.”
calibration – a systematic process where a group aligns their standards, evaluations, or measurements to ensure consistency, fairness, and accuracy, “The teachers held a calibration meeting to make sure they were grading the final essays using identical standards.”
deter – to discourage, prevent, or stop an action from happening by creating obstacles or consequences, “Installing security cameras around the warehouse will help deter theft.”
bias – a strong, unfair prejudice or preference for or against one person, group, or idea, “To avoid any personal bias, the judges graded the contest essays without knowing the names of the writers.”
group bias – a psychological phenomenon where people in a group change their opinions to match the consensus or the views of authority figures, destroying independent judgment, “Because the manager spoke first, group bias caused the rest of the team to agree with her plan without questioning it.”