The Essential Metrics for Tracking Interview Compliance

It can feel like a delicate balancing act making sure your interviews are compliant: you want the best candidates, but you also need to ensure every step adheres to the proper standards. On top of that, there can be additional difficulty surrounding the lack of insight into how well you're actually doing when you make changes. That's why we've compiled the essential metrics that you can use to not only track your interview processes, but also guard against potential pitfalls.

1. What Are the Key Metrics for Interview Compliance?

1.1 Standardised Question Usage Rate

If you want fairer interviews, it's crucial to make sure that every candidate is being assessed under similar conditions. A steadfast way to ensure this is by introducing structured interviews and standardised questions into your interview processes - both practices limit personal biases that might creep into the decision-making process long term.

• What to track: Percentage rate of your interviewers asking all of the questions in your interview templates.

• How to track: Use tools like Evidenced, which automatically track question usage and provide question effectiveness data to help you monitor consistency across interviews.

Tip: If your usage rate falls short, consider implementing pre-interview training sessions focused on standardisation principles.

1.2 Candidate Experience Feedback

Your candidate's experience during an interview is a reflection of your company and your hiring processes. Recording their feedback provides quick and unbiased insight into areas that need improvement. It's about more than just receiving glowing reviews - it's about genuinely understanding what works and what doesn’t.

• What to track: Overall candidate satisfaction on a five star scale. You could also ask for a review of the interview's ease of scheduling, and the interviewer's communication clarity or level of professionalism.

• How to track: Capture feedback efficiently with post-interview surveys straight after an an interview is finished, such as those implemented by Evidenced.

1.3 Interview Documentation Completion Rate

An often-overlooked but critical metric is the completion rate of interview documentation such as scorecards or post-interview written evaluations. Leaving gaps can create compliance risks and make it especially hard to defend hiring decisions if challenged legally.

• What to track: Percentage of scorecards and evaluations being completed.

• How to track: Ensure your company uses digital scorecards that can be easily completed alongside an on-going interview, and can be shared with all relevant parties.

1.4 Interview Timeliness and Consistency

Interview timeliness doesn’t just improve candidate experience. To have fairer and more compliant interviews, candidates must all be assessed under similar conditions - if an interviewer is consistently late to their interviews or cutting them short, then they are putting their candidates at a disadvantage.

• What to track: Average length of interviews and punctuality in starting and ending as scheduled.

• How to track: Monitor the average timeliness rate of all interviewers individually and compare their rate to their colleagues.

1.5 Candidate Drop-Off Rates

A significant drop-off rate at certain stages of your interview process can signal flaws in your hiring practices and may suggest that your interviews are too complicated, long or taxing. It's essential to pinpoint at which stages the drop-offs increase, and if possible it should be evaluated whether certain candidate demographics drop off more quickly than others, which could suggest that your hiring should be more adaptable or inclusive. A high drop-off rate could also indicate a need for systemic changes in how applicants perceive your process.

• What to track: How many candidates start your interview process and decide not to complete it.

• How to track: Use the data on your ATS to monitor applicants who leave your process, and compare the percentages to your historical data or industry standards.

1.6 Interviewer Training Completion Rate

To maintain compliance, your interviewers should undergo regular training. Just providing training once, then never again, allows for standards to quickly slip and interviewers to not keep compliance in the forefront of their minds. Having regular training and tracking it's completion ensures they remain updated on best practices and legal requirements.

• What to track: Completion rates of mandatory training modules.

• How to track: Ensure your L&D department keeps a regularly updated list on which employees have completed their training, and when they are due to take more sessions.

Tip: Incorporate virtual shadowing where less experienced interviewers can learn from recorded interviews, fostering continuous learning and keeping them up-to-date on your hiring practices.

1.7 Audit Results

Regularly auditing your interview processes internally helps identify areas of non-compliance or inefficiency. It’s a feedback mechanism that can inform the refinement of your recruitment strategy overall as well as your interviews specifically. Effective audits will also keep your business prepared should legal challenges arise.

2. Why Is Continuous Monitoring Important?

2.1 Identifying Training Opportunities

Continuous monitoring of interview compliance offers precise insights into training needs. By tracking interviewer performance, you can pinpoint specific skill gaps - for instance, if a group of interviewers consistently rates candidates positively but they don't end up being hired, it suggests a need for recalibrating how those interviewers assess people.

Moreover, by maintaining these metrics, your HR team can develop targeted training programs. This isn't about generic workshops but specific sessions addressing identified weaknesses. Training can be customised to focus on areas like unbiased questioning or improving candidate interactions, thus, yielding a more effective interview process overall.

You can further improve your processes by using tools like Evidenced, which provide data-driven dashboards to track interviewer performance and identify real-time training needs efficiently.

2.2 Ensuring Legal and Ethical Standards Are Met

Monitoring continuously ensures that interviews remain compliant with legal and ethical standards, a non-negotiable aspect for every organisation. Data gathered from each interview can be reviewed to ensure adherence to anti-discrimination laws, avoiding questions on race, gender, or other protected categories. Pattern analysis can also reveal areas where compliance issues might be frequent.

It is especially important to keep an audit trail of interviews, as these help in verifying compliance with equal opportunity regulations, for example, if a legal problem does arise.

2.3 Benchmarking Against Industry Standards

Continuous monitoring serves as a benchmark against industry standards. By checking these metrics regularly, you can ensure the interview process aligns with current best practices, giving you a competitive edge. If your compliance metrics are below industry averages, it indicates a need for process improvements.

These benchmarks also help in identifying trends and shifts in industry standards. If your organisation is missing certain metrics others are tracking, it may warrant a re-evaluation. Staying aware of these benchmarks ensures you're not just up to date with compliance but leading in quality talent acquisition.

2.4 Employer Branding

Ensuring every candidate is treated fairly, without bias, can also build your organisation's reputation as an ethical employer, which can in turn boost your employer brand. Actively ensuring that all candidates receive the same levels of fairness and respect throughout the process also means that you won't lose potential future hires, or customers, even if they are unsuccessful in their interviews.

In conclusion, maintaining interview compliance requires a proactive and data-driven approach. By tracking the key metrics we have covered, organisations can create fairer and more efficient hiring processes. Continuous monitoring of these metrics ensures legal and ethical standards are upheld, identifies training needs, and benchmarks performance against industry standards, all while enhancing the candidate experience and strengthening employer branding. By prioritising compliance and leveraging tools like Evidenced to streamline tracking and analysis, your organisation can not only safeguard itself from potential risks but also establish a reputation for excellence in talent acquisition.