The first time I interviewed anyone, I had approximately 1 hour notice and I felt 100% confident in my ability to hire the right person. Ah, to be a 23 year old know-it-all again. I can’t help but laugh at myself now. I mean, really. I knew very little about the role I was hiring for or how to interview. But somehow because I was someone who showed up confidently during interviews, that added up in my brain to tell me I was good at interviewing others. 

I’m not special or unique in this misaligned confidence, although our reasoning for that confidence may be different. Only about 50% of hiring managers ever go through interview training. Many hiring managers still report confidence in their interviewing decisions even without training — in the ~50–65% range. Why? I don’t know why they would assume they’re good at interviews. Did they hire the right people? Unfortunately, the data rarely takes us that far. Most organizations can’t actually tell you how good managers are at hiring. 

But the trend at work is that we’ll be doing a lot more hiring in the future. While there will be fewer full time jobs thanks to the use of Generative AI and venture-backed profit margins, I expect a lot more gig hiring. In that world, the stakes are much higher for the interview process with each hire being tied to projects and performance. We can’t just leave interviewing skills to chance. 

Hiring Managers’ Most Popular Interview Mistakes

The most common mistakes I see hiring managers make are consequences of that confidence. The first one? Not being prepared in any way. Even though the recruiter sent the guide. Even when the document was attached to a meeting invite. Why? They don’t understand why it’s important in the first place and don’t understand the consequences of the  lack of consistency. 

That lack of preparation means they go in there “winging it,” leading to common mistake #2: They do not ask the right questions. They rush the decision without data or worse, ask to see more candidates. The dreaded, “can I just see a few more resumes?” It’s like an avalanche of mistakes. #Iykyk

The most common mistake of all? They compare people with each other instead of the job. So, instead of saying "can this person do the job, " they ask “do I want to work with candidate A or B?” This is commonly referred to as hiring for fit over ability. All of these mistakes add up to turnover, really long hiring times, and frustrating everyone. But we both know they won’t blame their interview skills. They blame you, the recruiter. 

Why Can’t AI Just Do The Interview For Hiring Managers? 

The blame game is probably why so many teams are so eager to outsource interviewing to AI. If people are so bad at it, just have machines do it. In some cases, I don’t think that’s an awful idea. You should use AI for pre-screening clear cut, deal breaker, mandatory requirements like location or even salary range. This is particularly helpful in high volume hiring where they have very few mandatory requirements.

However, when you get into roles with more seniority and complexity, I have yet to see AI that can interview these candidates beyond a basic pre-screen. The technology isn’t to blame for the lack of capability though - the managers are. As a job becomes more complex and gets more senior, the ability of a manager to clearly define what skills they are interviewing for becomes far less common. AI can’t find a skillset that a hiring manager can’t define. 

Even with that data roadblock aside, I still don’t think it’s realistic to believe we’ll ever get to a place where people are 100% out of the interview loop. A majority of people are not comfortable with AI making decisions that affect their lives overall. In a CIPD survey, only 1% of people said they would trust AI to make work decisions independently. Will that change? Absolutely. But we have a long way to go before anyone can trust AI enough to let it make decisions for us, especially not hiring decisions. 

Generating Better Interviewing Skills: Hiring Manager Interview Guides 

The biggest opportunity here is for you to use AI to be the best real time communicator you can be. The reality is that we’re not going to change every manager’s behavior with one training. We’re not going to press a button and evolve the culture of a hiring team. But AI allows scale of influence via communication in ways we just couldn’t manage before. Here’s what I mean. 

So, previously, I could send a templated interview guide. Now, I can put my job data, job post, performance reviews, and hiring manager intake into a folder in NotebookLM with that template and generate a custom guide for every person leading an interview that addresses each one of the common mistakes I mentioned before with solutions provided. Questions are there. Guidance on ranking there, too. Plus, if they’re really hands on, you can share the GPT or notebook with them and they can prompt the data to create their own tools. 

Let me show you a few ways you can create a standard or interactive hiring manager interview guide with ChatGPT or NotebookLM.

Just please make sure your managers are not winging it. That’s how we end up as headlines and trends on LinkedIn (and not the good ones).