The Interview vs Hiring Process: Key Differences and How to Improve

With 42% of candidates abandoning the recruitment process when something as simple as scheduling an interview takes too long, according to Cronofy, companies must understand the interview vs. hiring process better to ensure they retain the best talent. However, can you differentiate the nuances between interviews and larger-scale hiring processes?

In this article, we offer information to help you avoid blurring the line between these two concepts and assist with developing a recruitment strategy to reduce turnover rates. Discover how to:

Use the recruitment process to gather data on the applicants
Match interviews and interviewers with the skills of the applicant
Use DiSC profiles and mechanical aptitude tests in the process
Use targeted testing to more easily see candidate quality

Finally, learn how to leverage Success Performance Solutions’ offerings to improve every step in your hiring process, including interviews.

The Clear Line Between Interviews and the Hiring Process

The interview phase is only one step in a hiring process, every stage of which attempts to collect distinct evidence that defines the applicant and whether they fit within your company. Conflating the two can often lead to skewed hiring decisions, as you are bringing data from the interview that was not intended to be collected into the final decision, and the interview is not always a reliable indicator of all aspects of an applicant’s capabilities.

Instead, the best hiring process should use a series of specialized assessments in areas like:

Office skills
Mechanical aptitude
Leadership
Cognitive ability
Safety awareness

Interviews instead assess skills like:

Communication
Situational thinking
Cultural rapport with the interviewers
Reaction to real-time issues

Why Keep an Interview as the Only Data Point?

One of the key issues with interviews is that interviewers are only human. They can show variability, bias, and other challenges that can make the response difficult to assess. As such, if your only benchmark for determining if a person is a good fit is that method, you will likely receive poor results and potentially increase your turnover while reducing internal morale.

As one specific example, if you rely solely on an interview to decide whether to exclude a candidate, you may miss out on someone with powerful technical skills who simply falter verbally. Providing these individuals with training in public speaking or group engagement can yield a much more well-rounded individual later in your company’s future, without dismissing their strong talents.

During any leadership interview, you can also use the time to ask the candidate key questions to assess their communication style and determine which form of DiSC leadership they display.

Five Hiring Stages and the Tests That Turbocharge Each One

A strong hiring pipeline typically consists of five key stages that comprise its entire process. These include:

Sourcing
Screening
Assessment
Interview
Decision

Each of these hiring process steps can use key tests to ensure that a person is a good fit with the goal of confirming a candidate’s quality and to reduce turnover later on.

Stage 1: Values-Aligned Sourcing

During this stage, tailor the job posting to reflect your company’s core values and target the advertisement at those whose DiSC profiles indicate they are likely to be a good cultural fit. Push them on industry-specific channels, especially those related to the position, and those whose backgrounds might encourage better leadership or mechanical skills, depending on your needs.

If possible, use the links you post to tag people, depending on whether they apply from specific locations you know will produce candidates who fit your culture better.

Stage 2: Office Skill Screening

Use timed, online tests to gather data on the skills of every candidate, including information on their:

Typing speed
Data entry accuracy
Spreadsheet technical skills
Document editing

While these may seem basic, many candidates in the modern world are accustomed to either delegating these concepts or have allowed their skills to become obsolete as software has advanced. As such, confirm these baseline administrative abilities using real-world scenarios to compare them to specific needs.

Integrate these results into your processes moving forward to focus your efforts more on learning about where an individual shows promise and to ensure that your interview focuses on the areas most likely to yield fruitful results.

Stage 3: Behavioral and Safety Assessments

Using a workplace safety test, measure how well an applicant can engage in key skills related to both their behavior in the workplace and how safely they can act daily in their role. These tests tend to measure:

Rule-following
Hazard recognition
Conscientiousness
Work ethic
Responsibility taking
Decision-making

You can then compare these tests and others like them to various industry norms to determine whether a person exhibits key strengths or may be a potential risk factor. In many cases, you may find that if they excel in other areas, you can provide a small amount of training to bring someone up to speed if they are not aware of your specific industry’s safety requirements. However, ensure that no other red flags exist.

Stage 4: DISC-Driven Structured Interviews

In theory, this should be the only area where you must engage in an “actual” interview.

Once you have narrowed down your applicant numbers based on the above, you can begin the more time-intensive process of interview planning. The purpose of these assessments is to determine whether individuals meet your requirements in terms of their DiSC leadership style.

Ensure that interviewers are trained on how to interpret both the reports you already have and how to compare your results with what is likely to occur during the interview to assess how well a candidate matches these results in reality. For example, sometimes, you may find that a candidate can describe the perfect steps they would take or knows all the answers in theory, but when put on the spot, they display a wholly different leadership style.

If that is the case, they still possess the knowledge, but they may require some form of confidence training or a similar approach to help them display the competence you need.

Remember to have more than one person in the interview. Instead, conduct panel interviews and bring in stakeholders from different areas of the business who will be able to assess them from different angles and work out how they can benefit your company in various ways.

Then, after the interview, compare and contrast these notes to confirm shared conclusions and facilitate an easier hiring decision when all interviews are completed. If possible, use an online dashboard, such as the one available from Success Performance Solutions.

Stage 5: Composite-Score Decisions

Bring together all of the ratings, test scores, and other information that you may have into one unified set of data. You should then weigh each of these factors to ensure that role-critical skills get the most attention, and others can help you decide between those with similar capabilities.

Then, develop rules to advance or reject these individuals based on their scores. If necessary, put together an automated rejection that you can send to applicants who have not met this requirement, to save you time.

Unique Interview Challenges and Solutions

As seen above, only one key step in the whole process is the interview. However, there are still key ways that the process can be affected by this one area of assessment. Aptitude Research even admitted that over four-fifths of recruiters have lost good talent due to a poorly considered interview process.

For example, ensure that all interviewers receive appropriate training in communication and workplace ethics. Ensure interviewers are aware of what they can and cannot ask during an interview, including during polite small talk at the start and end of the process.

This step is crucial as Dominion Risk Advisors has recently discussed how over 50% of all discrimination claims in 2024 were for retaliation, highlighting the need for care when ensuring talent management compliance.

You should also ensure that you assess each applicant using the same model questions. Assemble these question banks before you start the interviewing process itself, and categorize them based on specific tags, such as:

Skills
Behaviors
Safety steps
Cultural fit

Using these, you can align them with specific things applicants have said or done to ensure that you are asking questions that match regulatory requirements.

Train interviewers to make a few notes before they look at the applicant’s résumé, too. By doing this, they avoid the résumé itself impacting their assessment. However, it also prevents them from being fully aware of the applicant’s capabilities before the interview.

Raise Your Understanding of the Interview vs. Hiring Process

Leverage every benefit you can source to ensure that you can perform high-quality assessments on your candidates and make every interview count. At the same time, take action to ensure every person involved understands the differences between interview vs. hiring process standards.

If you want help ensuring that you complete your hiring process with the best assessment criteria available, Success Performance Solutions can assist you. With nearly 30 years of experience in the assessment industry and extremely loyal clients, we are confident that we can provide the recruiting solution you are looking for. Call us today to learn why.