Now you can generate a healthy pipeline Top-of-funnel qualified candidatesconvert them First sales conversationAnd the Beginning Cultivate relationships Once you’ve established that you want to land an interview, it’s time to put together your interview loop. This guide will show you how to do it if you have little to no interview experience.
While every interview loop is different, we aim to highlight best practices that are common to most loops.
5a. Designing the interview loop
Designing an interview loop starts with researching and defining what you need. It’s important to map key skills and personality traits to different parts of the interview and set clear success criteria. Strategically, track the interview by adding structure through the stages: initial sales conversation → screening → onsite → debrief → reference → offer.
5b. Best practices for interviewers
Share best practices with interviewers to ensure candidates have a positive experience and interviewers receive the best signals, including preparing before the interview, putting candidates at ease, asking the right questions, taking time to answer the candidate’s questions, and taking detailed notes.
5c. How to conduct the report session
After the interviews, we hold a debrief to make a hiring decision. Before the debrief, everyone writes down their feedback. During the debrief, each interviewer shares how they came to their conclusion. After the debrief, we aim to make a hiring decision or set clear action items to gather more signals.
5d. Background checks
You should aim to obtain informal references throughout the interview process, and sometimes formal references as a final step before making an offer. The purpose of obtaining references is to verify or refute the information you gathered during the interview process by learning more about the candidate’s past work achievements, strengths, and areas in need of improvement.
5e. How Gem interviewed the founding engineering team
In some situations, you may be able to leverage “hire contracts” to build your initial engineering team. This is how Gem hired 9 of its first 10 engineers. It’s a great way to evaluate candidates and helps them get to know your startup.
Don’t forget the candidate experience. The interview is a Get to know youMake sure that the interview is a two-way communication. Sales and Closing Through every step of the process.
Next
Now we’ll get a little more specific about the topics we discussed above. In Part 14, we’ll go into more detail on how to design an effective interview loop.
Meanwhile…
