Post-its and Interviews Part 2

Here's the continuation of Janet and her team getting ready to interview candidates to hire a new team member. (See Part 1 here)

As the team files back in after their break, several people stop in front of the board, looking it over and thinking. Janet calls everyone to the table.

"Ok. We've built a good list here. We've got a couple of tasks to take care of, and maybe a little homework for everyone. Let's start out by talking about our job posting. What should it say? Why don't we break into pairs and see what we can come up with?"

After several minutes the pairs are combined into two teams of four and asked to write a new posting based on both pairs efforts. Several minutes later and the two teams are combined and work on merging their job postings into a final draft.

"Hey, this is a great start, but I think we might want to tailor the message a bit for our different channels," says Cindy, another team member.

"Good idea," responds Janet. "Before we go down that path though, which recruiting channels should we use? Any ideas?"

Several people respond as the lead writes ideas on the white board: the local UX users group, the jobs board at a conference two team members are going to next week, the HR recruiter, and a number of other ideas are all written down. Janet speaks up again.

"I like this list. How should the messages be different for each of them?"

The team dives into the discussion again, coming up with a short list of do's, don'ts, and thoughts about each of the possible recruiting channels. Team members are each assigned a recruiting channel to write a job posting for, and asked to email their efforts to the team tomorrow for approval.

Larry, the senior designer, speaks up, "Ok, if that's out of the way, do we want to build the interviewing team? I really liked the job Susan's been doing leading our reading group. Could she be the primary screening interviewer?"

"I think that would be great! Susan, are you up to it?" Asks Janet.

"Well, I was hoping to be on the main team again, but this sounds like a fun task too." Susan replies.

"Don't worry, we'll look to you for some guidance on what to ask about, and listen for, around books the candidates have read recently." Janet turns to the rest of the team. "Which of our customers should we invite into the interview process?"

Does your team spend enough time before the interview to make sure you'll hire the right people? What do you do to improve your interviewing and hiring process?