Let interviewees 'go rogue': How conversational interviews can help with recruiting and retention

Interviews are an integral part of the recruitment process. But what if recruiters have been approaching them the wrong way this whole time?

Sixty-three percent of recruiters say their biggest problem is not being able to find enough suitable candidates to fill open positions, according to employment agency company MRINetwork. However, much of that is due to a flaw in the current interview process, according to Shannon Gabriel, VP of leadership solutions at TBM Consulting, and it's something she believes can be fixed by letting candidates "go rogue."

"The current interview process is a model that's been built and steeped in tradition that rarely changes," Gabriel says. "You often get short, one-sided answers that are usually already configured based on what a candidate has been trained to do. By letting them 'go rogue,' it's breaking down the barriers and giving applicants an opportunity to treat their interview not as just a process, but rather as a conversation where recruiters want to get to know them."

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Conventionally, recruiters depend on standard questions in a 'yes' or 'no' format, or questions that ask for specific examples and rely on a candidate's past work experience, according to Gabriel. While that process makes it easy for organizations to determine whether a candidate has the technical skills to handle a job, it does very little to help recruiters and applicants alike gauge whether it would be a good personality fit.

But what does it mean to let a candidate "go rogue?" The strategy simply means replacing the old structure with one made up of open-ended questions that are more conversational, which focuses on soft skills and requires equal participation from both the applicant and the recruiter. 

"Recruiters shouldn't want applicants to feel like it's a formal interview, they should want applicants to be able to ask questions and walk out of the interaction more educated, too," Gabriel says. "In a conversational format you learn all the different idiosyncrasies from a candidate and what's important to them through the stories they tell and the narratives they choose." 

A more open interview style is just the most recent addition to the ongoing trend of making recruiting — and consequently, retention — as successful as possible. In previous months, organizations have made other recruiting changes such as rolling back their degree requirements and rethinking their drug test policies in an effort to make positions more accessible to a larger candidate pool.

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"We've reached a state of desperation," Gabriel says. "By doing these things, we're removing barriers in the hope that we're going to reduce turnover and start building some retention by making sure that company's personality profile fits the individual."

Changing the interview structure to focus on soft skills doesn't mean forgetting the importance of hard skills, either, according to Gabriel. On the contrary, she suggests organizations have a second person sitting in on the interview whose role is to check the candidate's competency for the role while the primary interviewer is engaging in conversation. The goal is to build a more personal process with long-term improvements.

"Right now, we look at candidates and think of how much we can get out of them in just the first three to 12 months, because we just assume they're not going to stay," she says. "But if we actually started interviewing them with a different lens, we're going to see longer tenures than the generations before them and can start to build a long-term strategy."