The onsite interview is perhaps the most make-or-break moment of the entire recruitment process. This is when you get the information you need to say goodbye to a candidate or extend them an offer to become part of your team. It’s critical, therefore, to structure your interview process. Here are some pointers:

• Establish what you are looking for in a candidate before they come in.
  The benefit: If you are deciding between two candidates, you can reduce the effects of unconscious bias with an objective framework for evaluation.
• Ask interviewers to evaluate for different areas (culture fit, behavioral fit, skills fit, etc.).
  The benefit: You’ll get the information you need in order to make an informed decision, and give the candidate a positive, professional experience.
• Standardize your questions.
  The benefit: Asking every candidate you interview the same or similar questions lets you more objectively compare them. Of course, allow fluidity here. Running down a checklist of questions instead of letting a conversation flow naturally can inhibit you from discovering valuable information and forming a meaningful connection. Use your best judgment.
• Use an applicant tracking system.
  The benefit: A tool like Lever saves you time and helps you create scalable, repeatable processes. Schedule interviews on an interviewer’s calendar right from within Lever, and schedule automatic reminders so an interview doesn’t go forgotten again. Use our interview kits to set up forms for different jobs, provide guidance to interviewers on what they should look for, and even give them the right questions to ask.

It’s important to collect interview feedback quickly. Right after an interview is when information is freshest in everybody’s mind, and the ability to make a quick decision and get an offer out is a competitive advantage. Ask interviewers to take notes during their interviews and submit feedback via your chosen tool.

When one person is in charge, you can be a lot more confident that great care goes into each and every hiring decision. The responsible stakeholder can’t shrug off a poor hire as “just a group call.” What’s more, hiring managers are more likely to act as advocates and make sure new hires are successful when they feel direct responsibility for the final say.

Ready to make an offer? Resist the urge until you've done thorough reference checks. The cost of hiring a mediocre performer into your organization is great, and it’s ultimately in your team’s best interest to take reference checks seriously. But to make reference checks worth your while, make sure you're asking the right questions. It's hard to get the full picture from references unless you do some digging, so for questions that help you discover a candidate's true caliber, read our post on example reference check questions.

Once you’ve made a decision to extend an offer to a candidate, you want to move fast. You don’t want to risk another company coming in with a competing offer, and moving quickly makes it clear to the candidate that you are excited to welcome them to the team.

When you extend the offer, make sure not to rush through the information. Take pauses and gauge their reaction. If you know the candidate will need a hard sell, try opening the conversation with questions to find out what reservations they might still have instead of jumping straight to the offer. Use the motivations information you gathered throughout the interview process – like why they’re excited about your company and what they’re looking for in their next job – to remind them why your offer is a good fit. It can also be helpful to have the candidate chat with the hiring manager and ask interviewers to send follow up emails for an extra touch.

5. Manage talent relationships

A modern recruiting process has to be agile and flexible enough to adapt to non-linear events. For example, you may source a candidate who won’t be ready to think about new opportunities for another year, or turn a candidate down but find a new role they’re a better fit for a few months down the line. How are you keeping tabs on those candidates?

Top talent isn’t knocking on doors, so recruiters today have to be smart and strategic, taking advantage of, and nurturing, the relationships they already have. Here are a few tips for building strong relationships with candidates who need the long sell:

• Set up a Google Alert for the candidate’s name so you can reach out at meaningful times. Keep close tabs on why you archive a candidate (compensation, timing, seniority, etc.) With a system like Lever, you can track and customize archive reasons easily.
• Set reminders to follow up with candidates at a later date, when their circumstances may have changed. You can also achieve this easily in Lever with the “snooze” function. Snooze a candidate to receive an email reminder to follow up, along with any note you left yourself.