From my observations, hiring manager interviewing mistakes fall into these big buckets:

1. Overvaluing first impressions and hiring those who are more talkers than performers, and not hiring top people who were temporarily nervous.
2. Overvaluing gut feelings (a.k.a., intuition).  This results in hiring people who are good at some things – like communicating and planning – but not everything, like delivering high-quality results on time.
3. Focusing narrowly on technical skills, which results in hiring people who might be technically brilliant, but who can’t work with non-techies, and/or have no clue about meeting commitments, and/or are poorly organized, and/or don’t fit with the culture.
4. Assuming everybody should be excited about the job, even those top performers who are not looking or who have multiple opportunities.  The best candidates then voluntarily opt out because the manager came across as unprofessional.

All of these false positives (hiring someone you shouldn’t) and false negatives (not hiring someone you should) can be eliminated by having the hiring manager use a structured career-oriented exploratory interview in combination with video before proceeding down a path towards mediocrity.

The exploratory interview is the more important aspect of this new process.  If someone is not looking, the focus of the first meeting must change to an open discussion about the career potential of the position, rather than the hiring manager assessing the person’s ability to do the work.  Most managers aren’t very good at this part.

Here are the steps involved in this exploratory interview process:

1. Opening.  Clearly state that this is an exploratory interview to determine if the open job offers the candidate a career move.  This is a critical statement, since it shifts the interview from investigatory to collaborative.  Then describe the process you’ll use to conduct the conversation.  The steps are described below, but basically it consists of a back and forth sharing of information.
2. Quick review of the candidate’s background and career focus.  Ask the candidate what she’s looking for career-wise, how long she’s been looking, and why her current job is less satisfying.  Also find out what other positions the person is considering.  Then spend five minutes reviewing the candidate’s current job in some detail, focusing on span of control, impact made, and overall responsibility.  You’ll gain a sense of fit from this.
3. Quick review of the job and career opportunity.  Provide the candidate a high-level view of the job, why it’s important, and the impact it could have on the company.  If obvious, highlight the possible areas of growth for the candidate based on the person’s resume and what was just discussed.
4. Conduct a short work history review.  Assuming there’s mutual interest start reviewing the candidate’s background in some detail.  Just get highlights at first, looking for evidence of the achiever pattern.  Focus on possible gaps in the candidate’s background where there appears to be opportunities for growth (e.g., bigger team, more learning, bigger budget, more impact, faster growing company/industry).
5. If a reasonable fit, describe the next steps, being semi-positive, but introduce some areas of stretch.  Shift the conversation a bit, describing what you like about the candidate and areas where the job could offer some stretch.  Ask if the candidate finds this appealing in comparison to other opportunities the candidate is considering.  If so, suggest you’d like to dig in a little more to see if the person has the potential to handle a bigger job at this time and if there is a good cultural fit.  It’s important to make this shift since the conversation now moves from a dialogue among equals to more of a standard evaluation interview.
6. More detailed job fit assessment.  Describe a major job challenge and ask the candidate to describe her most comparable accomplishment.  This is my one-question interview with fact-finding.  Spend 10 minutes on this to see if the candidate is a contender, meaning the person is an achiever and has accomplished something reasonable in scope.  If so, describe some of the growth opportunities in the job – often these are the gaps in the person’s background that your opening fills in – and ask if she’s interested in proceeding.
7. Allow for candidate questions.  Ask the candidate what criteria she’s going to use to compare positions in general and what things she would want to know about your open position in particular.  Answer a few of the big ones, but don’t oversell.  Find out the person’s timing regarding a move.
8. Recruiting and next steps.  Instead of rushing to a close, tell the candidate that you’re impressed with her background, but that you have some other strong candidates to also consider.  Ask her if she believes the job as described represents a career move, especially in comparison to others she’s considering, and if she would like to come back for a more detailed interview.

You can conduct this type of interview over the phone, but adding video adds an important dimension.  Most important, when you actually meet the candidate the impact of the person’s first impression will largely be neutralized.  From the candidate’s perspective, she’ll be coming in ready to sell herself as to why she’s a great fit for a possible career move.

Starting the conversation with a hot prospect about a possible career move rather than a standard interview represents a shift in approach that great managers use all of the time.  All managers need to do the same thing if they want to hire more top performers.  It starts by recognizing that the best people are only willing to enter into the hiring process when there is the possibility of a career move at the other end.  The exploratory interview is a great way to prove it.