Better Hiring Decisions: The Skills Behind an Effective Recruiting Process

The problem with a convincing first impression

Candidates have always prepared for interviews. They research the company, anticipate common questions and practise explaining their strengths. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Preparation demonstrates interest and helps applicants communicate their experience clearly.

The difficulty arises when interviewers mistake the quality of that presentation for evidence of professional competence.

Consider a candidate applying for a management position who is asked how they deal with conflict. They describe themselves as calm, empathetic and solution-oriented, then provide a polished example of resolving a disagreement between colleagues. The answer sounds convincing, and the interviewer moves on.

But how much has actually been established? The candidate may genuinely possess excellent conflict-management skills, yet the interviewer still knows relatively little about the decisions they made, the competing interests involved or how they responded when the situation became uncomfortable. Without exploring those details, the conversation has largely established that the candidate knows how to describe good conflict management.

The growing use of generative AI makes this distinction particularly relevant. Candidates can now prepare compelling application materials and rehearse interview responses with relatively little effort. In its September 2026 recruitment survey, the CIPD found that 27% of UK employers that had attempted to recruit reported what they considered excessive use of generative AI in applications.

However, the underlying challenge existed long before these tools became available. A polished answer has never guaranteed professional competence. AI simply makes it easier to produce one, increasing the importance of interviewers who know how to look beyond the presentation.

An effective interviewer needs to recognise when an answer remains superficial and explore it without turning the conversation into an interrogation. Asking what alternatives the candidate considered, what they personally contributed or how their initial approach changed can provide a clearer picture of their judgement and behavior. The quality of the interview depends on whether these questions generate evidence relevant to the position.

What exactly are we trying to assess?

Much of the uncertainty surrounding interviews begins before the candidate enters the room. Hiring teams frequently agree that they need someone with strong communication skills, a collaborative mindset or the ability to work under pressure. These descriptions sound reasonable, but they are too broad to provide a reliable basis for evaluation unless everyone involved understands what they mean in the context of the position.

Take the requirement to work well under pressure. For an emergency services professional, this may involve making rapid decisions while managing immediate risks. For a project manager, it might mean negotiating priorities when several stakeholders demand incompatible outcomes. A customer service specialist may need to regulate their emotions while dealing with an angry customer.

Each situation requires different behaviors. Yet an interview panel could easily assess all three using the same generic question about handling stressful situations, then award scores based on whichever answers sound most convincing.

A more useful approach is to begin with the work itself. Which situations will the person regularly encounter? Where could poor decisions create significant consequences? What behaviors distinguish someone who can perform the role effectively from someone who merely understands its responsibilities in theory?

These questions help translate broad expectations into meaningful selection criteria. They also make the interview more relevant for candidates, who gain a clearer understanding of what the job actually involves.

This is particularly important when assessing personality and job fit. Personal characteristics can influence how someone approaches their work, collaborates with colleagues or responds to changing circumstances. But the idea of fit becomes problematic when it is reduced to whether a candidate reminds interviewers of existing team members or shares their communication style.

Someone who challenges prevailing assumptions may initially seem less comfortable to work with than someone who readily agrees with everyone. Depending on the role, however, the willingness to question decisions could be precisely what the team needs. Without clear criteria, organisations risk selecting for familiarity rather than capability.

Diagnostic information is only useful when someone knows what to do with it

Many recruitment processes already generate more information than interviewers know how to use. Alongside CVs and interviews, organisations may employ personality assessments, cognitive tests, work samples or other diagnostic tools intended to provide additional perspectives on candidates.

These methods can contribute valuable information when they are appropriate for the role, supported by reliable evidence and interpreted correctly. But introducing an assessment does not automatically improve the hiring decision.

Imagine a candidate whose assessment results suggest a tendency towards a particular working style, while their interview answers indicate something different. An unprepared interviewer might ignore the results entirely, treat them as definitive proof of the candidate's personality or attempt to reconcile the contradiction through personal intuition.

A better response would be to understand what the assessment measures, how reliable its conclusions are and which aspects are relevant to the role. The apparent discrepancy might then inform further exploration during the interview rather than becoming an automatic reason to accept or reject the candidate.

This is one reason the CIPD emphasises that psychological assessments require appropriate training and that selection decisions should draw on multiple sources of relevant evidence. Diagnostic results must be interpreted within their limitations, especially when evaluating complex characteristics such as personality, collaboration and adaptability.

There is a substantial difference between having access to information and knowing how to use it responsibly. The latter requires professional competence.

Interviewing deserves to be treated as a professional capability

Managers are routinely expected to conduct recruitment interviews because they understand the technical requirements of their teams. That knowledge is valuable, but it does not automatically make someone a skilled interviewer.

Good interviewing involves communicating clearly, listening attentively, recognising cognitive biases and evaluating evidence under uncertainty. It also requires a degree of self-awareness: interviewers must be able to distinguish between what a candidate actually demonstrated and the assumptions they have formed about that person.

These capabilities can be developed through deliberate practice. Hiring managers can learn to formulate more revealing questions, recognise weak evidence, interpret diagnostic results appropriately and evaluate candidates against shared criteria. Reviewing realistic interview situations together can also reveal how differently people interpret the same answers and where unconscious assumptions begin to influence their judgement.

This matters because recruitment decisions have consequences that extend well beyond filling an open position. A poor match can affect team collaboration, management capacity and employee development, while a fair and well-conducted process gives candidates a clearer understanding of the organisation they may join. Even when someone is ultimately rejected, the way they are assessed contributes to their experience of the employer.

In a labour market where employers are already struggling to distinguish suitable candidates from large volumes of applications, improving the quality of assessment deserves as much attention as improving the efficiency of recruitment. The CIPD's 2026 survey found that 58% of UK employers had experienced an increase in applications from unsuitable candidates, while only 33% reported an increase in suitable applications. These figures do not establish a universal trend across Europe, but they underline the practical importance of knowing how to evaluate candidates consistently.

Ultimately, a well-designed recruitment process should enable an organisation to explain why it selected one candidate over another. That explanation should be grounded in the requirements of the role and the evidence collected throughout the process, rather than the confidence of the person making the recommendation.

Hiring will always involve uncertainty. Candidates cannot demonstrate every aspect of their potential during an interview, and no assessment can predict every challenge they may encounter. But uncertainty is precisely why the quality of the decision-making process matters. The more deliberately organisations develop the people responsible for hiring, the better equipped those people become to recognise relevant capabilities, challenge their own assumptions and make decisions they can substantiate.

How much do your hiring interviews really reveal about the people sitting across the table? DeepSkill and Zortify have joined forces to help HR professionals, recruiters and hiring managers answer that question with greater confidence. Their new interview-training programme, Hire with Confidence, focuses on looking beyond rehearsed answers and personal chemistry to assess personality and job fit more systematically. Participants learn to explore how candidates collaborate, respond under pressure and navigate change, while making more informed use of diagnostic insights. If you want your next hiring decision to rest on more than a good feeling, discover Hire with Confidence and explore how the programme can strengthen your team's interviewing capabilities.

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Sources

• Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. (2026, 22. September). Resourcing and talent planning report 2026. Zur Studie
• Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. (2026, 22. September). Selection methods. Zum Fachartikel
• Office for Equality and Opportunity. (2026, 4. März). Use fair and structured interview techniques. UK Government. Zur Veröffentlichung
• Sackett, P. R., Lievens, F., & Landers, R. N. (2026). Hiring people in organizations: The state and future of the science. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 13, 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-020924-072127

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