The people you choose to hire are the most important part of your business. After all, they are the ones who will be responsible for building and selling your products, and keeping your customers happy.

The right interview training for hiring managers ensures that offers are made to candidates who will excel in their roles and contribute to your company's success.

Interviewing techniques vary widely, and what works for one company may not work for another.

The key is to find a combination of hard and soft skills that fit your company culture and the types of positions you are hiring for.

When it comes to interviewing training for interviewers, there are a few basics that all managers should master.

These include:

1. Asking the right questions
2. Reading body language
3. Listening for keywords and phrases
4. Eliminating biases that would alter their decision-making

Once you have these basics down, you can start to tailor your interviews to specific positions.

For example, if you are hiring a customer service representative, you will want to focus on questions that assess their ability to handle difficult customer interactions.

If you are hiring a salesperson, on the other hand, you will want to ask questions that assess their ability to close deals and build relationships with clients.

The best way to learn how to conduct effective interviews is to practice, either on your own or with a group of peers.

There are several types of interviews:

1. Phone screen
2. Initial Interview
3. Panel Interview
4. Skills or Proof of Work Assessments
5. Reference Checks

Each of these interviews has a slightly different purpose, and as such, requires different types of questions.

Phone screens are typically used to weed out candidates who are not a good fit for the position.

Initial interviews are used to get to know the candidate better and assess their qualifications.

Panel interviews are used to assess how well the candidate works under pressure and also melds with people from the team.

Skills or Proof of Work Assessments are used to assess the candidate's ability to do the job.

An additional category that startups have found to be instrumental in understanding a candidate's fit is past performance.

This can be assessed through behavioral questions or by asking the candidate to provide specific examples of their work. Most C-suite level teams that we've seen like to see metrics that they can verify with an employee while checking the candidate's references.

Technical and behavioral interview training for hiring managers should take all of the above into account. The goal is to find the right combination of questions that will assess a candidate's qualifications while also getting to know them on a personal level.

When it comes to interview training for hiring managers, the most important thing is to practice, practice, practice. The more you do it, the better you will become at assessing candidates and hiring the right people.

The right interview intelligence software can provide the necessary data to help you coach your hiring managers and teams to interview better.

Video interviews that are recorded and transcribed allow you to see how the candidate and interviewer interact, identify areas for improvement and make sure that interviewers are asking the right questions.

Recruitment Training for Hiring Managers

Interview skills training for hiring managers can be the difference between your company's success and failure.

One bad hire, especially someone who manages people or has a company-wide impact, can easily cost a company millions of dollars.

But let's momentarily take a step back.

Recruiting top talent is the first step to making great hires. This is achieved through an effective recruiting strategy, which should be tailored to your company's specific needs.

The most important things to think about when building your recruitment training for hiring managers are:

Where will we find top talent?
What will attract top talent to our company?
What are our company's values? aka - How will know a candidate is a culture fit?
What skills are required to be a good fit?

Once you have these down on paper, you can start to build a recruitment strategy.

Top talent, especially in tech, is not often found on large job boards through open role posts. The reason for this the number of under-qualified candidates can overwhelm even the most organized and tech-savvy team.

If you think slightly outside the box, you'll find that the best candidates "hang out" in places close to their targets.

Here are several examples we’ve seen great success with:

1. Role or Company-Specific Job Boards: High Alpha Careers, Exit Five, PowderKeg, and others.
2. Social Media: Especially LinkedIn Networks and Groups.
3. Employee Referrals: This is the #1-way Demandwell (one of High Alpha's fastest-growing studio companies) attracts talent.
4. SaaS Recruitment Firms and Professionals: Amy Volas, Founder & CEO of Avenue Talent Partners, Bolster, and Outhire.
5. Fellowships: Like the Orr Fellowship.
6. Bootcamps and Academies that teach specific skills: LaunchSource, ElevenFifty, FlatIron, and App Academy.
7. Professional Associations: Like Pavilion.

These and many other platforms offer a targeted way to reach the right talent.

Additionally, you can use tools like Google for Jobs and LinkedIn's Recruiter Lite to help identify and contact potential candidates that might not be actively job searching.

The most important thing when it comes to recruiting is to focus on quality over quantity.

It's better to spend more time looking for the right candidate than to just settle for whoever applies.

I get half a dozen recruiting requests a week, and I know many people get far more than that.

The "war for talent" is in full force as shifts in the economy, technology, and job market create new opportunities and challenges for companies.

As the talent landscape changes, so do the way we need to think about recruiting.

Sending a generic LinkedIn message may work for 1 in 100 people, but what about the other 99?

These are all important to consider as you build an effective recruiting strategy.