Gather opinions
In order to receive feedback in an orderly fashion, Satcherhas his interview team complete an evaluation form on eachcandidate immediately after the interview. The evaluation features five to six questions that have to do with such categoriesas the candidate’s appearance, interaction with the interviewer, knowledge and experience.
Satcher asks them to circle a number between 1 and 4 to givehim an idea of what each person thought of the candidate. Heuses a four-point scale to avoid getting middle-of-the-roadresults. By using a scale of 1 to 4, those choosing have to thinkbefore circling a 2 or a 3, which would show Satcher that theevaluator leaned toward it being a good or bad interview.
“I try to force them to either get to the upper end or the lowerend,” he says.
Yet, even on a four-point scale, team members will still writein 2.5, instead of choosing 2 or 3
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That’s why Satcher leaves room for comments on the form.You can get a better idea on how the middle-of-the-road peoplefelt about a candidate if they can explain themselves.
On top of giving a numeric rating and leaving comments, healso asks the interview team to make one of three choices: recommend the candidate, recommend the candidate with reservation and explain the reservation, or do not recommend thecandidate and explain.
“It’s worked well for me because what I’m able to do is, firstof all, tabulate a numeric number,” he says. “I can tabulate thenumeric number by class of interviewee. I pull out scores forthe senior management. I pull out scores for the directors, andif I have any base-level employees, I pull out those scores. So,I can look how the senior team scores them, I can look at howthe directors scored them — I can break it out any way.
“So, I can tell that there is a disparity between those publics.I also can tabulate the do not recommends, recommends, recommend with reservation, so I can first of all get a numericalpicture of how people felt about the candidate and kind of geta feel for what’s the order of priority — who is top choice overall, who is the top choice among the senior managers.”
Armed with that information, Satcher can drill down into theverbatim comments and use the comments as a litmus test onhow good the feedback is matching up. If he’s got people whorated a candidate great on appearance, but some team members wrote negative comments about the candidate’s appearance, then he knows there is a disconnect somewhere.
“So it’s a combination of those two,” he says. “Then, ofcourse, I take that information and I then measure it up againstmy impression of the candidate. What’s matching? I’ve had situations where candidates interview real well with the seniormanagers. You can see it in the scores, you can see it in thefeedback, but they interviewed very poorly when it came to thedirectors.
“It’s a very fluid process. What I’ve tried to do, because somuch about choosing people is subjective, not objective — I’vetried to infuse a little bit of objectivity in it by using this scale.It works pretty well for me.”
On occasion, if two pieces of feedback are contradictory,Satcher will meet with the two who gave the feedback and askabout it.
“The feedback helps me determine where I need to put myinvestigative efforts,” he says.
After all the information is tabulated, Satcher will meet withthe entire team to let them know he is going to be making anoffer to a candidate.
“My position there is they gave me their time, and they gaveme their energy and their efforts, [so] I owe them the courtesyof letting them know what that time and effort let me decide,”he says.
While Satcher says taking the time to have an in-depth interview process is important to a company’s success, he doeswarn against taking too long to fill a position. If you are takingthe process beyond 60 days, then you start to get into the period where the process is just dragging. Some complicated positions may require more time, but try to limit most searches to60 days. He recommends if you have an applicant pool ofbetween four to eight people, cut it down to the strongest threeor four and stop looking.
“Once you get out there and start getting feedback, I see people make the mistake of trying to interview too many people,”he says. “That can just get confusing. Particularly in my model,if I throw too many candidates at (multiple people), it’s hard tosustain that kind of momentum in getting people together allthe time to interview.”
In the end, Satcher says he will make the decision when hehas to, but he still wants his employees’ feedback.
“That’s what they pay me to do,” he says. “But as much inputand involvement as I can have in helping come to that conclusion, I’ll take advantage of.”
HOW TO REACH: Largo Medical Center, www.largomedical.com or (727) 588-5200
