The Costly Mistakes Your Hiring Managers Are Making at Interview
What if your hiring managers are missing the most critical questions during interviews — and it’s burning through your bottom line?
When it comes to recruitment, most businesses put huge effort into attracting talent — but far less into ensuring managers have the skills to pick the right people. How do you encourage hiring managers to interview more effectively? Where do you even start? What skills do they actually need? And crucially — how can you be sure they’ll apply what they’ve learned when the pressure’s on?
Bringing in external consultants for high-stakes or high-volume recruitment can help — for a while. But it’s expensive. And what about all the other critical roles you fill day-to-day? The hard truth is: if you want consistently better hiring decisions, you need consistently better hiring managers.
Yet strangely, interviewing is often the ‘forgotten skill’ — no training, no support, just “get on with it.” And that’s where costly mistakes creep in. If you’re ready to change that, here’s how to get started, the challenges to expect, and how to overcome them.
Step One: Making the Case for Change
Getting busy managers to invest time in upskilling isn’t easy. It needs to matter to them — personally and commercially.
Here’s how companies we work with frame the conversation:
- Consistency is key. Right now, there’s no shared view of what “good” looks like. Without that, we risk hiring decisions that aren’t right for the wider business.
- Support, not blame. We’re not here to criticise — we’re here to help. You deserve the tools to hire well, and it’s a disservice if we don’t equip you properly.
- Hiring mistakes hurt — badly. A bad hire costs far more than just salary. It wastes management time, drags down team morale, and can rack up hundreds of thousands in hidden costs.
- Future-proof your teams. Few decisions have a 5, 10, or even 20-year impact. Hiring does. Let’s get it right from the start.
Step Two: A Skills Refresh — Even for the Veterans
Some managers will have years of interview experience — and that’s a good thing. But even seasoned pros can fall into habits or myths that need a fresh look.
We call these moments “Totem Lollipops”: opportunities to celebrate what you already know, discover the science behind what works, and sharpen your interviewing skills for the next stage of your career.
Step Three: Build the Right Learning Experience
When you get your group together, how should you run the session?
Two golden rules:
- Make it a real conversation, not a lecture. Adults don’t learn by being talked at. Draw on what’s already working for them. Explore what’s challenging. Build on real-world experience.
- Focus, focus, focus — on criteria.
Far too often, interview training veers off into debates about tricky CVs, red-flag instincts, or “should we grill them with tough questions?” All valid discussions — but the heart of better hiring is crystal-clear role criteria, and objective assessment against it.
And that’s the burning question most hiring managers miss:
“What does this role truly need?”
Miss that, and you’re guessing. Guessing leads to bad hires.
Step Four: The Real Burning Questions — Before You Even Post the Job
Before interviews even begin, encourage hiring managers to sit down together and ask:
- Why does this role exist?
- What value will it add to the team, department, or business?
- How will we measure success? What would a great first 12 months look like?
- What skills, knowledge, and experience are absolutely essential to deliver that?
Answer those well — and your interview questions practically write themselves.
Imagine:
If success means increasing sales by 10% in a saturated market, then the interview question becomes:
“Tell me about a time you grew sales in a tough market. What was your strategy? What results did you achieve?”
Or if the goal is turning around a low-performing team:
“Talk me through a time you helped a struggling team hit their targets. How did you diagnose the problems? What actions did you take?”
Hiring smarter doesn’t start at the interview table — it starts long before.
So, to truly ace the interview process, remember these cornerstones: first, get crystal clear on the actual demands of the role; second, arm yourself with incisive, focused questions that dig deep; and third, stick like glue to the criteria you’ve already established. Stray from this path, and you risk the costly consequences of a poor hiring decision that ultimately impacts your company’s success.
