The Interview Maturity Model

 A long time ago, the Capability Maturity Model was a thing, & it laid out a framework for how to measure an organisation's 'maturity' - how it had grown as an IT company to be considered 'capable'. I know, that's a lot of rabbits. It was supposed to encourage rogue IT professionals to think about their processes, & for company administrators to set achievable goals that improved the processes. At the highest level, very few companies achieved CMM6, or at least very few would advertise it, & those that did were doing so for bragging rights or were in a competitive market (like consulting).

Today, I am unemployed, which means I'm bored enough to think about interviewing from the receiving side. I've done a lot of interviews from both sides over the years, so I think I'm in a fair position to judge technique as much as assess effectiveness.

I am willing to propose a simple model for gauging the maturity of an interview process. Although I have the IT industry - or IT professionals - in mind, I am sure there is some equivalence that can be extrapolated.

• Level 0 - no process. You interview so rarely that each position is 'unique'. There's nothing wrong with that, but you could invest some time into thinking about the effectiveness.
• Level 1 - a repeatable process. You file an outline of an interview, perhaps with questions related to different roles.
• Level 2 - a delegate-able process. One person holds the process & others implement it. The process can be described simply, but the interviewers must be capable of performing the interview. For example, giving a technical question to an agent requires that the agent be able to understand the answers.
• Level 3 - effective content. The interview questions are reviewed & updated for relevance to roles. This includes querying the candidate's history as provided in the CV. The interview has structure, such as a timeline to minimise the chance of overrun.
• Level 4 - effective interview. The interview process allows for an interviewer to not only find the gaps in the candidate's knowledge, but also find out about the candidate (not just their history) & determine their 'fit' beyond technical skills.
• Level 5 - training, collective accountability, & feedback. Although the process is well-defined, an interviewer can benefit from practice, each interview result is discussed by a group of people involved (rather just reporting their findings), & this reflects both on the candidate & the process itself.

Note, I am not saying that this has to be done in one, two, or ... far too many interviews. I have worked for large companies that spread out the process across five distinct aspects (initial, technical, architectural/communications, management, cultural), or manage to squeeze this down into three. You can turn the technical testing into a take-home exercise, use a group interview, add a final executive (for a senior role), & apply all sorts of variations. That becomes your process.

The main point here is, look at where your process sits, & determine whether it's worth the investment to 'go up a level'.

Why would you?

If, for any reason, you feel that you're not getting the right candidates going through your process - failing at a late stage - or the candidates that become employees fail probation regularly or leave within a year - churn - then this is an unnecessary cost to the business that could be minimised by having better interviews. If you like, having this measurement is Level 6. It's more of a trigger that you need to review, & either you already have a review process, or you can now justify building one.

Retention

Retention rate, at the board level, is a good measure of the effectiveness of the professionals who are producing the goods & services, & may well reflect on that output quality. However, & this is important, it has to be measured as something beyond average tenure of current employees. Churn is a factor, but churn amongst new employees is the best indicator of, for example, a toxic workspace.

If you're attracting the right candidates & employing them, then you also need to measure both their continued fit & their likelihood of staying on. They were employed for a reason - skills-wise - & you don't want to lose those skills or have to replace them, because that costs resources.

But that's another topic entirely.