To make the hiring process more effective, some of the world’s biggest companies have been using peer interviewing as a powerful and integrated approach to hiring new team members. Essentially, peer interviewing, is where a panel of employees conduct a candidate interview.
This method is a great way to make your dealership more attractive to high quality candidates who may have more than one offer on the table. Prospective employees will note that employees get included in strategic decisions, such as who gets hired and who they choose to work with.
Peer interviewing has proven to be highly effective for companies like Google, and in order to replicate their successful processes you need to be aware of the best practices as well as the benefits that wish to see – which could include.
- Candidates and teams get a better feel for team fit
- Candidates get to know the company
- Peers can ask and answer more specific questions
- Candidates feel more at ease
- The team gets excited about hiring
Some of the pitfalls of this process are found when there is a lack of training around the interview process. Consider conducting interview training with whoever you select to be part of the interview panel as this will help prepare and educate them about how to objectively select the best candidates.
In consideration of a productivity dip and not wanting to scare off candidates, do not bring the whole crew to the interview! You only need to have the best representatives for the company. These can include the most liked, talkative and/or highly productive team members. In your dealership you could have about 10 or 15 salespeople, pick four or six of them. Consider also having someone from another department in your panel.
Also – don’t choose employees who might feel intimidated or threatened by the candidates, or would follow an emotional bias that overrides the rational skills and qualifications needed. You need team members who are secure in their position and confident.
Clarify the roles and expectations to the peers prior to the interview. Peers need to know that in addition to selling the company, they play an important role in the assessment of the interviewees.
A list of questions to be used needs to be agreed on as well, to avoid having the interviewers asking irrelevant or illegal questions. To leverage with the questions, it will help to create an assessment checklist for the peers, in order to create consistency in the way candidates are evaluated and rated.
Their knowledge of motor industry, cars sold in the past, years in the game or their Colgate smile isn’t all that matters. Assessing how they sell themselves, their demeanour or how they speak and thinking how that would be when selling a car to a client, needs consideration.
Culture fit is important too. However, that shouldn’t necessarily be a major motivating factor for assessment and selection. Hiring for cultural fit in peer interviews, can be subjective and limiting in terms of diversity – sometimes you will need someone who challenges you all to try different approaches and methods.
The panel also needs to know that they are assisting and recommending candidates, not deciding on who should get hired. You, the hiring manager decides, ultimately.
In conclusion, peer interviews are an effective selling and hiring tool. But preparation and education of the peers needs to be done beforehand. The panel needs to know what’s expected of them and what to look for. Importantly, they need to know who the final decision rests with.