L: … So how was the interview?

P: Interesting… Based on what we’re assessing in the first interview, I think she was great and we should proceed with her to the next round, but the hiring manager was not too sure. He said she talked too much and “has a bad feeling”.

L: Okay, so what does he mean by that?

P: I can’t put my finger on that and neither could the hiring manager!

L: Was it related to her interest in the role or the personality traits?

P: Personality traits. She is very interested in the role and has all the right experiences.

L: So what did you do?

P: We took a look at the definitions of the personality traits we’re looking for in the role and then her answers to our questions. We noticed that even if she talked a lot, she did give clear examples of situations that align with what we want. I also took the opportunity to coach the hiring manager on how to ask the follow-up questions in our competency-based interview framework and he gave me feedback on how to go deeper on the experience-related questions.

L: Sounds like a good approach and collaboration!

P: Yeah, I’m so used to only being involved in the early stages of the process where I would function as a “supplier”, but here it's more collaborative and more of a partnership, kinda.

L: That’s great! So what did you agree upon?

P: To proceed to the next steps and get a new pair of eyes’ perspective. After that, we’ll all sync up and see if there’s anything to the manager's “bad feeling” or if it’s a typical case of a bias getting in the way. That's better right?

L: Yes, definitely! And if we later decide to reject we’ll have something concrete to tell them. That's important for candidate experience.

P: Exactly, we always need to take the candidate's perspective into consideration as well. I’d be pretty pissed off if someone rejected me because they’ve got “a bad feeling”.

L: Haha, that’s not how we do it at Funnel!

The above exchange highlights a few important topics that we consider when working with recruitment here at Funnel:

• Being a Talent Partner means you are involved in the whole recruitment process and play an important part in the business. We act as partners to our hiring managers and candidates, we are not an “in-house agency”.

• Collaboration and feedback is essential to finding a great candidate

• You get to be the specialist - we have a say and can provide a different pair of eyes to try and counterbalance any possible biases

• Candidate experience is our top priority!

If you want to know more about how we work, feel free to reach out to us or listen to one of our Heads of Talent talk about it here (in Swedish).