Episode 16
How Panel Interviews Debias Your Sales Hiring Process
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Jim discusses the importance of involving multiple people in the hiring process for better outcomes in B2B sales. They explain that relying on a single person as the decision-maker can lead to bias and inefficiency. By leveraging panel interviews, companies can make more objective and informed hiring decisions. The guest highlights the need for diverse perspectives in the panel, including individuals from different roles, experiences, and backgrounds. They also emphasize the importance of a consistent and structured interview process to promote fairness. Panel interviews allow for in-depth analysis and a holistic view of candidates, helping to identify high-potential individuals and red flags. The guest emphasizes that involving multiple voices in the hiring process leads to the best possible hire and fit for the sales team and organization. They also suggest including someone at the peer level or from a highly collaborative function to gain insight into the candidate's ability to work effectively across the enterprise. The guest concludes by highlighting the importance of unconscious bias training in the interview process to ensure fairness and effectiveness.
Take Aways
- Involving multiple people in the hiring process mitigates bias and leads to better outcomes.
- Panel interviews provide a more objective and informed assessment of candidates.
- Diverse perspectives in the panel, including different roles and backgrounds, promote fairness.
- Consistency in the interview process is crucial for uncovering the best candidates.
- Panel interviews allow for in-depth analysis and a holistic view of candidates.
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Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk
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Transcript
You want to be dealing with 1 person. That can resolve your issues, but when you flip that principle around to the other side. If you're in B2B sales and you're in hiring and you as the sales leader are the single throat to choke when it comes to hiring, that can lead to a lot of bad outcomes. And here's what I mean.
er of people involved in the [:One of the big reasons why you want to broaden your hiring process and you want to have more people involved is that the narrower. Your decision panel is the more bias that might exist in that process. So this is something that you can't readily see. So having more people involved in the process actually will make you better off than having 1 or 2 people always involved.
1 of the ways that you can actually include more people in the hiring process and mitigate bias at the same time is by leveraging panel interviews. And this helps you make more objective, informed hiring decisions. And part of the reason that happens is that there's simply more people involved in the process.
So you're more likely to get an honest appraisal of the candidate that's in front of you versus if there's 1 or 2 people involved that can easily sway the interview process 1 way or another.
It's not enough [:So, 1st, and foremost, you need to make sure that you have diverse perspectives in your panel. This isn't just about roles on your panel, but it's about experiences and background. So, if you're part of if you're a a sales leader, and you want to make sure that you're hiring good cultural fits. That culture fit component needs to apply, not only to the sales function, but to the broader organization too.
So it's not the worst idea in the world to involve somebody in product or sales engineering or ops into the interview process and even include peers because you want to get varying perspectives to balance out individual biases. That might exist
next what you want to do is make sure that the process is consistent and we've talked about having structured interview processes previously, but that stays consistent.
You want to make sure that [:You want to make sure that your process is best of breed in terms of embedding fairness through the process and consistency through the process. That's actually going to help you uncover the best candidates. Another reason why panel interviews are critical in the sales hiring process, and especially when it comes to mitigating or reducing bias is that you have in depth analysis.
them, you're getting a whole [:1 of the things to keep in mind is that the more people that are involved in the decision making process. The more likely it is that you're going to get a combination of the best possible hire and the best possible fit for your group, your sales team, and your entire organization, especially if you're a startup or accelerating growth organization, you need to make sure that everybody can work well together.
Having a single silo approach or a single person, navigate the process of hiring is probably not going to be the best idea. You want to make sure that you have multiple voices involved in the process. So you can come to the best possible decision. For the best possible higher at the best possible time.
hing to consider when you're [:That's going to give you line of sight into how this particular candidate. Can work across the enterprise effectively. And that's going to give you some perspective that's going to be relevant to other areas of influence and impact that this hire is going to be dealing with.
When you're looking at eliminating bias from the hiring process, panel interviews are a good way to do that, but this isn't an automatic fit. Everybody needs to be trained on it. You need to have unconscious bias training, in your interview process. The goal is to make the hiring process and interviewing process as fair and as effective as possible.
re attracting a broad enough [:By having a panel interview format. That's representative of the entire organization and especially when you're in that early to accelerating growth stage of a startup. It's going to give you a lot more insight and it's going to increase the likelihood of a better hire.
