I am in the process of the final interviews of the first official hire for the Theodora Project in Ghana, a local manager. My volunteer team has done a spectacular job. We had received over a hundred responses over two weeks. They quickly winnowed those down to a dozen candidates. They did the initial interviews and skills screening until I was presented with the final three to select from. Hiring is not something I have done much of during my career. But as one of colleagues pointed out, I have interviewed tons of folks to be sub-contractor/strategic partners for my consulting and hundreds of people who wanted to join the networking group I formed. So it is not that I have not done any interviewing.
Nonetheless, this is a pretty key hire so I reached out to a number of my former strategic partner colleagues for assistance. It has been most valuable. One thing they cautioned me is to go slow and to be thorough. It has been sound advice. We are now in our second week with my having interviewed each candidate twice. Without the advice I mentioned, I might have made a choice after the first week. But things have changed substantially during the second week. It has reminded me of an old, old comic routine done in the 1940's and 50's by Abbott and Costello.
After the first round of interviews I had a definite 1st, 2nd, and 3rd candidate. However during the second week, my #2 candidate did a great second interview and moved up to #1. My former first candidate dropped back to #2. Then, I did the second interview of #3. She really impressed. She moved up. In the meantime my now #2 who had been #1 before, dropped out not liking the pay offered. My new #1 who had been #2 before I have not heard from since Tuesday. I suspect she is agonizing because she likes the job but it is a lot less money that she is making. So now former #3 may be my new #1.
Got that straight!
I am not sure I do.
3 comments:
may be time to add to the pool
Interviewing is hard! You are making an important decision on very limited info, although having a second interview, getting others involved, and checking references has helped me a lot.
I feel like I now have a ton of experience at this, because I interview for my job, I interview future roommates, and I go on many first dates. These experiences are far more similar than I would have initially expected.
sounds like you have a good problem to have, which is you have a lot of great candidates from which to choose.
@RM - I really would like to read a full blog post on that!
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