The 10 Minute Interview – Is it right for you?
We can hear you now, a 10 minute interview?! “Ten minutes does not give me nearly enough time to get to know the candidate!” or “How can I offer someone a job after only ten minutes?” But before we get into the specifics, let’s discuss some statistics.
The Ugly Truth of Hiring
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported that, on average, it costs a company between $4,425 and $14,936 to find a new hire. This, of course, depends on the role and skills of the position, with lower-skilled jobs being easier to fill and higher-skilled executive positions being more challenging.
This estimation doesn’t even consider your team’s time investment to complete the interview and training process. As well as the lost value your existing employee contributed to the practice’s bottom line if you are looking for a replacement instead of a new hire. This means you have to add even more expenses on top of those! Check out our blog “3 Advantages of Using a Recruiter to Hire” to see this scenario specific to the eyecare industry.
Those are some scary statistics. Anything we can do to speed up the process but still ensure we end up with a qualified candidate would be beneficial!
The Traditional Interview Process
Let’s say you currently have a highly intensive resume-reviewing process to ensure you are only spending time interviewing the top candidates and limiting your interviews to your top ten applicants. You schedule your first round of interviews for a half-hour and spend a total of five hours interviewing people.
Your Hiring Fears Have Come True
However, your hiring fears have come true! After the first three interview questions, you realize one of the candidates isn’t going to fit your practice, but you have only been in the interview for ten minutes. Do you politely ask the remainder of your questions to fill the remaining twenty minutes even though you know they are not the right fit or do you end the interview early, leaving a sour taste in the candidate’s mouth?
To compound the issue, your following interview goes fantastic. The candidate seemed like an fantastic fit, but you didn’t quite get as much time with them as you would have liked, so you still have to invite them back for a second interview, scheduling another half-hour or hour.
The 10-Minute Interview
Instead, let’s reimagine the interview process! Take the same five hours you want to dedicate to the interview process. Kick things off by reviewing resumes, but this time, you don’t have to go back and forth reviewing resumes for minor differences that indicate someone may be a better candidate over another person. You can schedule up to thirty interviews in that same five hours. Chances are you won’t even have thirty candidates you want to interview, so you can spend less time reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates, saving the practice money and increasing your chances of finding that unicorn!
A few candidates present better on paper than in person during your interviews, which you detected with your first few interview questions, and a few stood out with exceptional potential. Reach out to these potential candidates to schedule second interviews for thirty to sixty minutes and make a final decision from there. This allows you to maintain a two-interview process without investing unnecessary time with unqualified candidates.
Ready to try it out?
If the ten-minute interview sounds like something you would like to try, let us know when you begin hunting for your next candidate, and we can help schedule your interviews! Just be sure to have the perfectly crafted first interview questions to make the most of the time you have!