Stop Guessing After Interviews

Hiring can get messy fast… especially after a few interviews. Faces blur together, details fade, and “gut feel” starts doing more work than it should.

This episode tackles that exact moment: when the interview is over, and you’re left wondering how to fairly compare candidates without second-guessing yourself later.

I share a simple evaluation approach I’ve used for years that creates clarity right after each interview—while everything is still fresh.

The takeaway is straightforward: better hiring decisions don’t come from better memory. They come from a simple, repeatable way to evaluate people objectively—before emotions and assumptions take over.

If you’ve ever walked out of an interview feeling confident, only to feel unsure days later, this conversation will hit home.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Intro
• 0:48 The Importance of an Interview Evaluation Checklist
• 5:42 Making Objective Hiring Decisions
• 6:36 Like, Subscribe

Transcript

In today's video, I want to talk about once you've interviewed a candidate, and particularly if you have multiple people interviewing the same candidate, if you're interviewing multiple candidates, how do you kind of keep them straight in your head? And I developed a procedure a while back that is an evaluation checklist that I recommend that you create for yourself that will let you as soon as you're done with that interview, evaluate that person's skills and qualifications to be able to know when you look back and you're comparing whether or not that person is really, like who's the best candidate, who's really the right fit. So I'm gonna share my screen with you and I'm gonna share that form with you that I created. And this is what I call my interview evaluation worksheet.

And, you know, there's some basic information there at the top. This happens to have what's their experience, computer skills, education, professionalism, personality, poise, maturity, conversational, objectives. So you can see kind of like what this does is the first few, let's say, are probably very much related to the specifics that when you were interviewing them and you were asking them questions about specific skills and qualifications they had and giving asking them to give you examples of how they did that job and and really getting into how they think. 

Those, however, you evaluated their responses to those questions is what would really fall into evaluating these first few categories right in today's day and age computer skills in terms of knowing certain software to be able to do certain jobs is critically important. So that's why that's on there. But their overall skills and qualifications when you look at them are where would you rate them anywhere from, know, there's no relationship to the position to, my gosh, they're, they're excellent. Their background is exceptional in terms of their experience. And then the rest of these are related to things like what's their education level, again, depending on the position that may or may not be relevant, professionalism, personality, poise, maturity. And I recommend that you do this as soon as you're finished with the interview with this person, while they and your experience of them is fresh in your mind. 

So as soon as that person leaves, fill out this form. And I have found that by doing this, it really has helped me a ton in being able to evaluate and compare different people, but also taking the time to do it right then and there allows me to kind of get a gut feel for, well, how did I feel about these things about them in terms of their poise or maturity or how well they conversed and then be able to evaluate those skills against whatever the position is. If I have a project manager, and their conversation style or their poise and maturity is really on the lower end. It's somewhat tense or they're, you know, they have a poor self-expression and they don't really communicate well. I really want to consider that that might not be the best fit in the position of a project manager. It might be completely fine if it was somebody who is a carpenter or a laborer or a, you know, AP clerk, right? 

Depending on what the position is some of these things are gonna have more weight or other. But by doing it right away, the thing that I found is that it really helps me take the time to do it. Like I said, while it's super fresh in my mind and that I can have this information as I'm going back afterwards and comparing them one against the other. So I highly recommend that you institute some kind of a checklist like this for yourself. I have also found is that while sometimes I really like somebody, am sure, you know, I've just spent an hour and a half interviewing with someone and I'm sure I'm never gonna forget that person. But after about the second interview, I promise you like you do you forget and I have found that having that checklist is so helpful in being able to really just have a more objective view about candidates. 

As I say that, I think about a time when I was sure I was interviewing three different people and I was sure that that person was a right fit for the job. And I really, really liked them and I wanted them to be the person for the job. But what was so interesting is that when I compared those three sheets of my evaluation of them, and I had every other person who had interviewed this person, it was a controller position. I'd had, was the owner had also interviewed them. And when we compared sheets, what we found out was, well, I really liked that person. They were not actually the best qualified to do that job.

And so it can really help you have a little bit more objectivity, which is important when you're trying to make sure that you're interviewing for the right person. So I recommend that you identify what are some of those things that you want to evaluate and be able to compare that person's skill and multiple candidates against and also multiple interviewers and put that in writing, have a checklist and fill it out as soon as you're done with the interview so that you can have that information to make sure that when you make that hire, you're making the best hire for you. So I hope you found this information to be helpful. Feel free to pop a note down below in the comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. And ⁓ if you decide that you're gonna do this process, I'll work for you. Thanks, I'll see you next time on the Profit Builder.