Interview Training for Hiring Managers: Your 17-Step Guide

The majority (99%) of hiring managers who have received interview training say they truly needed it. No matter the state of the job market, leaving a strong first impression on candidates can help attract top talent to your organization.

That’s why your hiring managers must know how to interview candidates properly, with minimal bias, and ensure that even unsuccessful candidates have a positive experience.

This article explores what interview training entails, HR’s role in the process, and how to conduct effective interview training for hiring managers.

Contents
What is interview training for hiring managers?
17 steps to conduct effective interviewer training
HR checklist for interviewer training

What is interview training for hiring managers?

Interview training for hiring managers (also known as interview skills training) aims to build the skills hiring managers need to prepare for an interview effectively. It also teaches them to ask the right questions, evaluate candidates fairly, and hire the most suitable candidates. 

An interview training workshop or course will often cover the role of the interview in the hiring process, the potential unconscious bias and legal issues around specific questions, interview checklists to maintain fairness, and mock interview sessions with feedback. 

Job interview training can potentially provide more positive candidate experiences, increase the quality of hires, shorten the time to hire, and lower hiring costs.

HR’s role in interviewer training

HR plays a key role in training hiring managers to interview candidates effectively. HR professionals facilitate interviewer training in the following ways:

• Identifying training needs based on hiring manager experience and company goals
• Designing structured interview training programs
• Offering regular feedback
• Monitoring performance improvements over time
• Help hiring managers ‘pitch’ their team and company to candidates in accordance with company values and branding
• Ensuring training aligns with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) objectives.

17 steps to conduct effective interviewer training

Training hiring managers to conduct interviews properly and fairly involves helping them to take specific steps before, during and after the interview. This system will also ensure a better candidate experience. Here are 17 steps you should follow to help you conduct effective interviewer training:

Step 1: Assess current interview skills and skills gaps

Before planning or starting interview training, evaluate the hiring manager’s current skill levels. This involves thoroughly assessing their current interview techniques, identifying any gaps or deficiencies in their approach, and pinpointing where improvements are needed.

You can conduct this assessment through various methods, such as surveys, self-evaluations, one-on-one discussions, or observing live or recorded interviews.

Try this

• Observe the hiring manager in an interview: Sit in on an interview between the hiring manager and a candidate so you can take notes and provide feedback on their techniques.
• Collect feedback from candidates: Gather feedback from candidates about their interview experience to identify areas for improvement.
• Evaluate questioning techniques: Assess the types of questions the hiring manager asks (behavioral, situational, or technical) and their effectiveness in evaluating candidate fit.

Step 2: Define the training program’s goals

Once you have a clear picture of the hiring manager’s interviewing skills, the next step is to determine the objectives for interviewer training. What do you want hiring managers to walk away knowing, and how can you best measure the training program’s success? Establishing these details will inform the development of your interview training plan.

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• Write a list of goals: Prioritize these based on what matters most in your organization.
• Set SMART goals: Use SMART goals to help refine the goals you’ve listed. They must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.

Step 3: Develop a structured training curriculum

Create a structured training curriculum to ensure you’ve detailed all the relevant learning objectives and how you plan to meet them. Key considerations for developing this curriculum include topics, content delivery methods, and input from different teams.

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• Topics to include: The program should cover job descriptions, overcoming unconscious bias, asking the right questions, types of interviews, body language, active listening, and legal considerations.
• Training on content delivery: Role-playing scenarios, lectures, videos, group discussions, quizzes, and feedback can help ensure your program is engaging and impactful. 
• Get input from your executives: Incorporate ideas from different departments and get input from hiring managers themselves to ensure everyone is invested in the training program. 

Step 4: Plan how to deliver the training 

Decide whether HR will deliver the training or if you’ll outsource it to a training company or freelancer. Weigh the quality, time, and cost associated with each option, and make sure your lead trainer has the necessary training and experience for the role.

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• Oversee practical administration: Liaise with trainers, book meeting rooms, set training dates, and ensure the relevant materials and software are ready for the training participants.
• Incorporate practice and feedback loops: Include mock interviews or role-playing exercises for hiring managers to practice asking questions, assessing candidates, and managing interview dynamics. Then, provide immediate feedback afterward to help them refine their skills.

Step 5: Train hiring managers on company culture and values

The definition of a quality candidate varies depending on the cultures and values of your organization. For example, a company that greatly values creativity and innovation will typically hire different candidates from a company that values teamwork above all else.

Try this

• Include company culture and values in your training: This will help hiring managers ask specific questions and look out for certain skills and behaviors that align best with the company’s culture and values.
• Provide examples: Share specific examples of behaviors or actions that reflect your company culture so hiring managers can more easily recognize them in candidates’ responses. 

Step 6: Teach the basics of effective interviewing

Structured interviews are objective, job-related, and equal opportunity-friendly, making providing feedback to candidates easier.

A structured interview leaves no room for random, spontaneous questioning, reducing bias and potential legal issues. Because they minimize individual bias, structured interviews are also effective for team hiring and group interviews. 

Try this

• Help hiring managers understand the company’s interview scorecard: If you have an applicant tracking system (ATS), hiring managers can log in and create their own interview scorecards.
• Train them to use an interview scorecard: This will ensure consistent, fair, and structured evaluation. Walk hiring managers through the specific competencies or skills on the scorecard and how the rating scales work. Also, use real or hypothetical examples of candidate ratings to help them differentiate between average and strong candidates.

Step 7: Provide training on unconscious bias

Hiring managers must be aware of unconscious bias to minimize it. They may be unaware of which questions are appropriate or not up to speed on current hiring laws. As such, it’s crucial to train them in this area to ensure a good candidate experience.

Try this

• Test hiring managers’ unconscious bias: Harvard’s Implicit Association Test is a good test hiring managers can take to determine their unconscious bias. You can also show them educational videos on the topic.
• Use role-playing: Having hiring managers role-play in bias experiments during training sessions can help them better understand the impact of unconscious bias.
• Create a diverse hiring team: Interviewers from a range of backgrounds and lifestyles are usually more appealing to candidates and less prone to bias than a non-diverse team.

Step 8: Focus on interview techniques

In your interview training, focus on teaching different interview techniques to help hiring managers identify the best candidates. Understanding and using a mix of behavioral and situational questions will help them in this area.  

Try this

• Teach hiring managers to ask behavioral questions: An example would be, “Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult colleague.” Such questions evaluate candidates’ behavioral skills and how well they match role requirements.
• Teach hiring managers to ask situational questions: For instance, they can ask candidates, “If you had three deadlines approaching, how would you prioritize your tasks?” Candidates’ answers will show how they address work-related scenarios and help identify those who possess the most suitable skills.
• Prepare a bank of questions: Providing hiring managers with a list of predefined questions for specific roles or competencies helps ensure they’re aligned on what to look for. 
• Ensure consistency: Emphasize the importance of using the same set of questions for all candidates applying for the same role to allow for better comparison, as well as a fair and consistent process.

Step 9: Emphasize the importance of soft skills

Soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence, organization, and conflict resolution are just as important as hard skills. Emphasize this importance to your hiring managers and train them to assess a candidate’s soft skills. 

Try this

• Teach hiring managers the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, and Result) method: Candidates must detail a situation they faced in the workplace, what caused it, their involvement, how they acted, the outcome of their actions, and how this helped their employer.
• Emphasize soft skills’ importance in long-term success: Help managers identify essential soft skills that will aid in long-term success for each role. Then, teach them how to customize situational and behavioral questions to reflect real-life challenges the candidate will likely face on the job.

Step 10: Provide legal and compliance training

20% of interviewers have asked candidates illegal questions at interviews, and there’s a 95.8% success rate for charges of workplace discrimination. This means an untrained hiring manager risks asking inappropriate questions, creating a negative candidate experience, and getting the company in legal trouble.

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• Conduct legal and compliance training: It’s the company’s responsibility to ensure hiring managers know what they can and cannot ask at interviews. 
• Stay up to date: Laws are always changing, so you must stay up to date on them and keep the entire company—especially HR and hiring managers—informed.

Step 11: Cover different types of interview tools and structures

Different interview tools and structures can help you assess candidates according to the roles the organization is hiring for. Using a mix of interview types can help capture a broader range of relevant information about candidates, making it easier to select the best ones.

Some types of interviews hiring managers should consider are structured and unstructured interviews, video interviews, panel interviews, role-playing interviews, peer interviews, and blind interviews

Try this

• Speak to hiring managers: Get to know which tools and structures your hiring managers are familiar with, and ensure your training fills in any gaps. 
• Explore types of interview structures in-depth: Help hiring managers understand the advantages and disadvantages of each technique and when it’s appropriate to use it.

Step 12: Teach hiring managers about body language

Nonverbal cues are just as important as verbal ones. Body language can give you vital clues on how a candidate truly thinks or feels, regardless of what they say. Knowing how to interpret body language is a useful advantage, as it can help hiring managers dig deeper for pertinent information.

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• Teach hiring managers what to look out for: Crossed arms, leaning back in their chair, refusal to make eye contact, and eye-rolling may indicate that a candidate is defensive, bored, or stressed.
• Ensure the interviewer is aware of their own body language: If a hiring manager does any of the above or anything to make a candidate feel uncomfortable, it can create a negative candidate experience and reflect poorly on the company. 

Step 13: Leverage the right technology

Using the right technology can help streamline your interviewer training. For example, there are tools that can handle the administrative parts of the interview process. This will leave hiring managers with more time to do valuable work, like building a good relationship with each candidate.

Some suitable software includes ATS like Greenhouse or Lever, which can manage candidate applications, schedule interviews, and track progress. You can also use Calendly to simplify scheduling interviews across different time zones and enable real-time collaboration with hiring managers.

Try this

• Trial software to see which is most suitable: Many software providers offer free trials, so you can see what works best and fits within your organization’s budget before committing to it. 
• Use technology to create diverse interview panels: Hiring managers can use AI tools and data analytics to identify and select a balanced mix of panelists. One such tool is HireVue, which uses AI to reduce unconscious bias, analyze interview panels for diversity, and recommend panelists from diverse backgrounds to ensure more inclusive hiring.

Step 14: How to end an interview

The end of an interview is often overlooked, but it’s no less important than the interview itself. Avoid making generic, vague comments like “We still have other people to interview” or “We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.” Such statements don’t offer candidates any clarity and may give them the impression you’re not interested in what they have to offer.  

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• Provide clear next steps: Give each candidate a date by which they can expect to hear from you again. You can then give them an overview of the next steps if they progress to the next stage of the recruitment process.
• Always thank candidates: It doesn’t matter whether a candidate is right for your company—always thank them for their time and leave things on a positive note.

“It’s important to promote post-interview reflection. This includes encouraging managers to complete their scorecards immediately after each interview while the information is still fresh in their minds, and taking time to reflect on their ratings to avoid making snap judgments. It is also better to rate candidates independently, instead of all at the same time, to ensure hiring managers remain impartial and objective.”

Step 15: Prioritize candidate engagement

Most job seekers apply for jobs with several companies, likely your organization’s competitors. One of the best ways to stand out and attract top candidates is to prioritize candidate engagement. This will lead to higher-quality talent in your pipeline, as well as more engaged and diverse candidates. 

Try this

• Treat candidates like customers: Allow them to self-schedule interviews and give them detailed feedback even if you don’t hire them. 
• Inform unsuitable candidates promptly: If you know someone is not a good fit for the job or your company, let them know as soon as possible so you don’t waste any more of their time. This lessens the pain of rejection and maintains your organization’s employer brand and reputation.

HR tip

An interview checklist for hiring managers serves as a great reference for anyone conducting interviews, and will keep your talent acquisition team on track. Keep updating checklist this to ensure it reflects your organization’s most current best practices.

Step 16: Get feedback and follow up with training attendees

Feedback will reveal what hiring managers find most valuable about your training program, what needs improvement, and how the skills they’ve learned are impacting their interview process. 

Try this

• Add a feedback survey to your program: This will help you collect feedback when it’s fresh in participants’ minds. Follow up in a few months to see the real-life impact of the training. 
• Set up an online support group: Provide a space where interviewers can share handy tips and best practices that are working well for them.

Step 17: Develop a manual for interviewers

A digital working document detailing best practices for conducting interviews can be a valuable ongoing reference for hiring managers. This will be especially helpful to those new to the company or anyone who needs to brush up on their skills before an interview. 

Try this

• Make it easily accessible: Make the manual available online in your company’s digital storage system, and let all your hiring managers know where it is and how they can access it. 
• Include the manual in your manager induction training: Introducing this manual during manager induction training will help prepare hiring managers for the job and assure them they have a reliable source of information to rely on.

HR checklist for interviewer training

As part of your interview training for hiring managers, an HR checklist with actionable tips can help ensure you cover all essential areas and topics. This checklist should include the following items: 

✓	Teach hiring managers to use structured interview questions
✓	Cover the best interview techniques for different roles and situations
✓	Prepare hiring managers for unexpected situations
✓	Prioritize Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB)
✓	Emphasize the importance of active listening
✓	Remind hiring managers to align interviews with company values
✓	Ensure timely and constructive feedback
✓	Teach hiring managers how to create a positive candidate experience
✓	Encourage hiring managers to leverage technology
✓	Ensure they are trained on how to use technology

To sum up

Providing ongoing interview training for your hiring managers will ensure your recruitment team is confident and skilled during interviews, makes the right hires, and provides a positive experience for all candidates—whether they are successful or not.

By equipping hiring managers with the right skills, knowledge, and tools, your company can ensure it attracts top talent while making fair, informed hiring decisions. Ongoing training, feedback, and support will empower hiring managers to refine their approach, leading to better hires, a stronger organizational culture, and a more competitive employer brand.