Finding The Best Time To Interview

Do you have a good screening process?  Do you consider your managers and your team to be excellent at hiring the best employees?  Is there something you're doing that is causing you to let the best people slip past your fingers?

Let me toss the gauntlet on the table.  You have a good technical screening process, which assures that you can select the best of the candidates that you interview.  Now, how flexible are you in securing interviews?

I have a radical idea that I dare hiring managers to implement.  No more 8-5 interviews.  8-5 interviews are a sure sign that you aren't interviewing the best people out there.  Why?  Because the best people are already working! 

I hate the term passive candidate - but it's considered the Holy Grail for corporate recruiters.  Your active pool is usually large enough to meet your hiring needs, but when you want specialized talent, counting on the active pool of candidates to come through with the right person at the right time at the right place is a fool's errand.

Yes, the right candidate might be available and out of work, but if you only interview people from 8-5, you're cutting off candidates who simply can't take off to meet you.    Yes, some employees lie to their bosses about doctor's appointments, take long lunch breaks, take cell phone calls in stairwells and in the bathroom, and even skip out on important meetings or phone conferences to meet with you.  Is that really the type of conduct you want to encourage in an employee?

The first impression you give a candidate currently employed should not be tacit approval of dishonesty with their current employer.  Truly ethical employees won't take the time to meet you, and basically honest people start out the interview worrying about a) getting caught and losing their job, and b) worrying about getting back to the their work.  Their attention sure isn't on you.

The term we're looking for is selection bias, and companies can be doubly guilty with the 8-5 interview.  You're not only trying to select the best of those who can show up during working hours, you're hiring the best of those who will lie to show up. You've completely eliminated honest, hard-working employees who refuse to take time off from their current jobs to interview with another company.  Aren't those the very best people to select from?

There are challenges to this - afterhours interviews can be dangerous in some cities.  They can be handled poorly from a legal standpoint (for example one-on-one interviews between different genders with no one else in the building) and they can be frustrating if you have to take the time off from your evenings to interview a candidate.

Of course, it's probably not as frustrating as bringing the wrong person on board or missing your deadline for lack of a key resource  - but business is about tradeoffs.

What do you think?  Does the pre- and post- work hours interview strike any bells out there?