How to Upgrade Your Interviewing Team’s Skills for Better Hiring Decisions
TJ Kastning
Introduction: The Hiring Team’s Hidden Weakness
Most companies assume their leaders and managers know how to interview.
🚨 They don’t.
✅ They may be great at running projects.
✅ They may be strong at technical execution.
✅ They may have years of industry experience.
❌ But interviewing is a specific skillset—and most hiring authorities have never been trained to do it well.
👉 The result? Hiring mistakes, slow decision-making, and misalignment between interviewers.
If your company wants to hire better, faster, and with more confidence, your interviewing team needs a structured upgrade. Here’s how to do it.
1. Set Up Pre-Interview Preparation for Every Interviewer
Most interviewers walk into interviews unprepared, assuming they can rely on gut instinct.
🚨 This leads to scattered, inconsistent, and low-value interviews.
✅ Instead, require interviewers to prepare by reviewing:
- The job description – So they understand what the role actually requires.
- The candidate’s resume – To avoid asking redundant questions.
- Key priorities to assess – Each interviewer should have a focus area (more on that below).
- Potential concerns – What needs to be tested, verified, or clarified?
💡 A strong hiring team walks into the interview aligned, focused, and prepared.
2. Assign Lanes of Accountability to Each Interviewer
🚧 Biggest mistake? Every interviewer asking the same generic questions.
🚨 When everyone is responsible for evaluating the candidate, no one is responsible.
✅ Fix this by assigning each interviewer a specific area to evaluate.
🔹 Hiring Manager → Job-specific skills & role alignment
🔹 Executive Leader → Long-term vision & cultural alignment
🔹 Peer/Team Member → Day-to-day collaboration & work style fit
💡 When every interviewer has a clear focus, the interview process becomes sharper and more effective.
3. Collect Written Feedback Before Any Discussion
🚨 Verbal debriefs are where bias and groupthink creep in.
👎 If one strong personality shares their opinion first, it influences everyone else.
👎 Interviewers second-guess their instincts if they hear a conflicting take.
👎 The conversation becomes about consensus, not truth.
✅ Solution: Require every interviewer to submit written feedback BEFORE discussing candidates.
💡 This forces each interviewer to stand by their own evaluation, reducing bias and increasing accountability.
🚀 A well-run interview process relies on data, not just opinions.
4. Use Real-World Scenarios to Assess Decision-Making
Most interviews only assess how well a candidate can talk about their skills.
🚨 The problem? Talking about doing the work is different from actually doing it.
✅ Instead, design interview scenarios that test how candidates:
✔️ Communicate and navigate challenges.
✔️ Prioritize competing demands.
✔️ Handle conflict and problem-solving in real time.
🔹 Example for a Superintendent: “A subcontractor isn’t following safety rules, and your project is behind schedule. Walk me through exactly how you would handle it.”
🔹 Example for a Project Manager: “You get a call from a client complaining about delays and cost overruns. What’s your first move?”
💡 If a candidate can’t navigate these scenarios in an interview, they won’t handle them well on the job.
🚀 Strong interviewing teams test for actual performance, not just rehearsed answers.
5. Shorten the Hiring Process Without Losing Depth
🚧 Long, drawn-out hiring processes kill deals.
📌 The best candidates are evaluating YOU just as much as you’re evaluating them.
📌 A slow process signals indecision, inefficiency, and lack of commitment.
📌 Top talent won’t wait around while your team drags their feet.
✅ How to maintain depth while moving faster:
- Schedule interviews within 24-48 hours of resume submission.
- Stack interviews on the same day to condense the process.
- Use structured, focused interviews to eliminate unnecessary extra steps.
- Empower hiring authorities to make quick, confident decisions.
💡 An efficient interview process attracts top talent—a slow one repels them.
6. Use AI and Data to Improve Your Interview Process
Hiring teams often repeat the same mistakes because they don’t track what’s working and what’s not.
✅ Technology can help identify patterns, blind spots, and areas for improvement.
🔹 Record interviews to analyze where clarity is lacking.
🔹 Use AI to identify diverging and converging interviewer feedback.
🔹 Track interview success rates—how many hires thrive vs. fail?
🚨 Most companies don’t realize where their hiring process is failing—until they start measuring it.
💡 Continuous improvement = continuous hiring success.
7. Provide Interview Training for Leaders
🚧 Most hiring managers have never been formally trained on how to interview.
📌 They rely on gut feel, personal bias, and surface-level questions.
📌 They don’t know how to probe deeper when a candidate gives vague answers.
📌 They fail to recognize when a candidate is “telling them what they want to hear.”
✅ Invest in interview training for your team to teach them how to:
✔️ Ask high-quality behavioral and scenario-based questions.
✔️ Identify red flags and inconsistencies in responses.
✔️ Probe deeper into vague or rehearsed answers.
✔️ Make confident hiring decisions faster.
💡 A skilled interviewing team makes better hires—plain and simple.
Final Thoughts: Hiring Success Starts with Interviewing Excellence
📌 Most hiring teams assume they are good at interviewing—but few actually are.
📌 Upgrading your interviewing team’s skills is one of the highest-ROI investments you can make.
📌 A structured, disciplined interview process leads to better hires, less turnover, and stronger teams.
💡 Hiring isn’t just about finding the right candidate—it’s about having the right process to identify them.
🚀 When you upgrade your interviewing skills, you upgrade your entire organization.
Need Help Improving Your Hiring Process?
At Ambassador Group, we help construction leaders:
✔️ Train hiring teams to interview with confidence.
✔️ Implement structured, repeatable hiring processes.
✔️ Reduce hiring mistakes and improve long-term retention.
📍 Schedule a call here → Ambassador Group Exploratory Call 🚀
