Next Step after first Executive Job Interview
From a Yahoo Answers question about executive job interviews:
My dad applied for a job at alcon and he passed all the tests and they promised him a second interview.?
Does that mean he got the job?
Well, here are my thoughts for you, from 20 years of giving executive job interview tips:
Corporate recruiters have a process to follow, and that includes several steps that are done iteratively per candidate and concurrently with other candidates who are in the same process for the same job. This makes it a numbers game in many cases — similar to a sales funnel. They need to push X number of candidates through the first screening step to produce X number for the second screening step and so on.
Having said that, this process of recruiting is highly influenced by the humans who are running the process, including their personal preferences (often called their "gut feel"), their inside knowledge of the hiring manager's personal preferences, and the overall corp
What many people on the outside don't know: recruiting is as much an art as a science. There are really no cut and dried formulas (though some HR software vendors would have you think so) in determining the perfect candidate for a job. In one company, the process may depend heavily on skills tests or a combination of skills and personality tests. In another company, decisions may be made on statistics: GPA, number of sales, number of years of C# experience, or even number of connections in Linkedin! Other firms may screen on intellectual agility in a high-stress group interview. And still others may lean heavily towards team fit.
So, if one person inside a recruiting function tells an executive job interview candidate that they would get a second interview, it could mean different things:
- on to a second screen in a series of X more steps
- on to someone else who will review the first screener's notes and ask more questions
- on to the first round of panel interviews
- on to a final interview with the decision maker
So, if your father passed the first round, you/he may never know exactly why he passed, unless the recruiter tells him specifically.
Tell your father that, at the end of any interview, it is fine to ask what the exact next step will be, and with whom — especially if it is an executive job interview.
I might also add some unfortunate truisms that we find in this economy: job seekers tend to read a smiling comment about next steps as a promise, and internal recruiters tend toward making candidates feel good when they leave an interview. So tell him not to be disappointed if he actually never gets a call back. This economy, as you know, has more great executives vying for job interviews than at any other time in my recollection. And if internal recruiting is a numbers game, then so should your plan be as a candidate!
