When hiring new talent, the recruiters have a long way from conducting merely face-to-face interviews. The methods are refined, challenging, and constantly upgrading with novel trends and strategies. One such strategy is a peer interview. A self-explanatory term, peer interview is more than just a rendezvous between the candidate and the future peers. It’s a semi-formal setting utilized by HR professionals to gain new insights about a potential employee. Needless to say, the management and existing employees roped into the standardized recruitment process to add an informal and informative angle to the interview. It helps recruiters in detecting blind spots and gaining new perspectives that they otherwise cannot because of lack of tangible experience of the job.
Peer interview is quickly gaining momentum with more companies warming up to the process. Albeit it’s an effortless step for companies with a smaller staff, corporate giants such as Google, Facebook, Coca Cola India, Mphasis etc., have also encouraged peers to help in honing the hiring process. In India, the brand Coca Cola organizes peer interviews for general managers and top hierarchy. The HR examines the cultural skills of the candidate, and the management and clients evaluate the expertise, servicing skills, and whether the candidate is suitable for the role. Unlike in the past when recruitments were strictly HR’s responsibility, recruiters are now fishing for feedback from peers before hiring a candidate. Unquestionably, peer interviews have become an essential step in finalizing a talent for the company.
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To create peer interviews for the organization, the HR leaders must first create a guide, like an interview bible, to follow during the process. To begin with, choose diverse and well-performing employees as interviewers. Set criteria to look for and to evaluate while interviewing a candidate. In addition to this, prepare a set of questions for the peer interview and train your employee interviewers. Then, set an ideal time for the meeting suitable for both the interviewers and the candidate. Lastly, the recruiters must constantly improve the process by taking feedback from all the individuals who participated in the interview. For the recruiters, finding the right employee precedes everything. However, as lucrative as it can be, peer interview has its positives and negatives to make the process a challenging move too.
Positives of peer interview
Besides the candidate gaining a tangible perspective of what it is like to be working in the organization, the interviewers can detect blind spots such as the candidate’s preferences that recruiters may not be able to. Plus, peer interviews relax the ambiance of the hiring process. Candidates do not have to be decorous anymore and can freely speak their minds in front of interviewers who could be their potential peers. Also, these interviews can be motivating for the employees too. It can give them the recognition they need and make them feel more valued instantly.
Negatives of peer interviewing
There are certain downsides to keep in mind as well. Peer interviews can be incredibly time-consuming, and sometimes, the potential employee can intimidate the existing employees, thus affecting their mental presence and productivity. Another factor is that if the employee is unsatisfied with the organization, he or she can paint a poor picture in front of the candidate. Therefore, experts suggest that the HR leaders must scrutinize and pick a group of high-performing and diverse individuals for constructive outcomes.
Peer interviews are aiding recruiters in finding the right talents for the company. Considering how catastrophic wrong hires can be for the organization with the investment and time spent on them, peer interview has proven to have decreased these damages to a great extent. Indubitably it requires effort, consistency, and dedication on behalf of all those involved in the process. However, it is fair to state that peer interview is here to stay and will only transform the recruitment process for the best.
References:
- The Pros And Cons Of Peer Interviewing | Mighty Recruiter
- New recruits need peer group approval to get job in a firm | The Economic Times | Sreeradha D Basu & Devina Sengupta | July 16, 2013
- The Peer Interview: a Practical Guide for HR | AIHR Digital | Neelie Verlinden
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