13 things companies screw up with their interview candidate experience

I've hired more than 150 people in my career (that's a lot of interviews!) and I've "debugged" many interview process issues and snags. Conversely, I've also had 40+ interviews as a candidate at firms over many years. I can tell you that there are real mistakes made by employers (and I've made some of them myself and learned the hard way) in their interview process. Not knowing your candidates' experience can dramatically hamstring your ability to find, attract, and hire great talent. There's real time and opportunity cost to not considering the candidate experience. Below, I am going to share mistakes made by employers and I want to reflect on how that affects a candidate's perception of the company and the interview process.

Here is a list of 13 things I have seen personally or heard from others:

1. Your interview process doesn't grant candidates the chance to meet all the members of their team. That's important for all candidates but maybe even more-so for executive level hires because the makeup of the team will determine whether the candidate is set up for success or failure. A personal anecdote: once—while interviewing for a CTO role—I was introduced to the CEO and the Chairman of the Board but not any other members of the executive team. A candidate shouldn't have to ask for exposure to folks they'll be working in the trenches with daily.
2. You, your recruiters, interviewers or anyone in the process not being honest and transparent. If you can't back up claims, if you're hiding revenue concerns or an imminent funding runway cliff, they'll eventually surface. Trust your candidates to be mature enough to understand that—if there's no problem, there's no need to hire!—and be candid about what said problems are and why you think they're uniquely qualified to solve them.
3. Negative (and perhaps true!) Glassdoor reviews. Sure, there are ex-employees who may have left on poor terms or burned bridges and decided to light the house on fire in a review on Glassdoor. On the other hand, if you recognize recurring themes and repeated criticism for individuals or organizations in the reviews, as a candidate, tread carefully: where there's smoke there may be fire. Your goal shouldn't be to get everyone in your department to go on Glassdoor and counter with raving reviews. Instead, look within: How did this culture or the recurring theme get to a point where a series of reviews like this occurred over a period of time without correction? And then, work with the organization to actually change those problems for the better.
4. Poor follow-up/follow-thru and timeliness. I've had interviews go well and even though I was not interested in the role, I still heard nothing back from the recruiter or anyone else. This shows a lack of urgency or maybe a level of disorganization. There are other reasons for this. Perhaps the recruiter didn't get feedback in a timely manner and then was told to deal with another recruiting fire and forgot. Don't forget! Your best bet? Schedule time with candidates post-interview every time so that they know an update is coming (even if that update is "Still waiting for an update.").
5. Not meeting your boss face to face (or only virtually). Not necessarily a deal-breaker but this is not the example you want to be putting out there. And this may apply differently in teams or companies that are dramatically remote in the majority or perhaps in totality but those are pretty rare exceptions. Candidates draw conclusions about how people are invested in the organization by looking at how the company and the people involved invest time in their interviews.
6. Asking candidates what compensation they're making right now (or worse, ask for their whole comp history!). Instead, ask, "Have you given thought to what a comfortable, reasonable salary might be for you if you were to take this role?" Folks often volunteer what they're making. Every company will ask every external recruiter they work with for a salary history workup on their candidates. Part of the expectation but it can get uncomfortable. My personal advice on this is "Don't ask, don't tell." However, if you do ask and they don't tell, be ready to pivot the conversation to "Ok, no problem: do you have an idea of a target salary expectation?" Simple.
7. Building the job-plane while flying it. I once had a CTO interview process where I met with the CEO. The meeting was questions from me & informational from him and him pseudo-selling me on the role. This was my first meeting with him (setup by the Chairman of the Board) but would I be working for him or the Chairman? It wasn't very clear. Don't interview folks until you can answer a set of simple questions: Why are you hiring? What don't you know how to do that the candidate sitting across from you should? Who's the boss? What's the next job for this hire if they're successful? What metric will be following to determine success in this role? How is the team they'll be hired into likely to change in the next year?
8. Interviewers out of synch or duplicate each other. An example would be asking duplicate questions (especially on technical interviews, less so in a behavioral style interview). Or when one interviewer mentions the next step should involve an offer and then it doesn't and instead is yet another interview. This shows a lack of interviewing team cohesion and a huge example of being disorganized. There should be an organized format for each interview step. Start with kick-off meetings where the interview team discusses the reason for hiring and agrees on the right profile and the interview questions and format.
9. Prestige hiring. Or, "We hire the top 1% of <fill in the blank>." Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Most likely you don't, even if you think you do. Sorry. How do you evaluate for the top 1%? How do you measure whether those who are now hired stack up as 1% talent in the market? Smart candidates don't buy it unless perhaps it really is true. For many companies building mostly CRUD and web-based application software anyways, they don't need top 1% engineering talent. And even if they say they do, the amount of compensation they're willing to pay doesn't match up to attract top 1% talent.
10. Swiss Army Unicorn Hiring. Don't get me wrong, if you're hiring a CTO who will contribute hands-on, they should have reasonably sharp engineering skills. But a CTO role, like any executive-level role, is never only a hands-on role. Don't try to condense 3 jobs in one and then slap the fanciest job title on it if you're looking to attract the best.
11. Executive hiring with little or none of the process devoted to management style, building teams or strategic planning. I once had a CTO interview process that focused almost exclusively on technical skills. While I had no problem passing that gauntlet, I realized that what they needed was a software engineer, not a CTO. This shows a lack of understanding of what the company is hiring for and a lack of experience or maturity on the part of those in charge of hiring for it. The interview process may benefit from working collaboratively with the candidate to have them produce and present a 30/60/90/180 day plan if they were to assume the role.
12. Petty trivia-style technical interviews for software engineers. Asking questions that might otherwise be easily looked up by Google, or memorized, or in general playing "code golf," is not a great way to evaluate technical talent and it is at least somewhat downtrodden to a seasoned software engineer. The "we hire the best" claim above wouldn't have an interview process that included that. If the candidate wouldn't do it in a workday, don't ask it of them in an interview.
13. Failing to sell the candidate. All of them, early, and often! Many interviewers/recruiters assume you want to sell the candidate ... at the end of the interviewing process if it looks like they're going to be made an offer. No, no no. Don't do that. Sell early, sell often, sell repeatedly, even to those you pass or who pass on your role. Do this because you want those people talking to the next person about your company as being a great place to work, even if they got rejected!

What are some of the ridiculous, silly, stupid, insulting, or wacky things you've seen employers do that shoot themselves in the foot in their interviewing processes?

Credit to Matt Hoffman for contributing his expertise and editorial feedback on this post.