There are hundreds of articles written and published every year to help job seekers improve their interview techniques to land their desired position. There are far fewer however that address the damage a poor technique on the part of the person conducting an interview can do to a company and its reputation.

Here’s a real world example. A large telecommunications company - one of the 'big three' in the US -  receives approximately 100,000 applications for employment nationwide each year, of which about 5,000 make it to the interview stage. The company employed an outside firm, Ipos Mori, to ask 2,000 of those people for their post interview opinions. The results were not quite what the company had wanted to hear.

The survey found that a full third of those questioned left the interview room with a poor impression of the company. They cited rudeness, unprepared or late interviewers and sexist, racist or discriminatory attitude in general as some of the top reasons that they formed a negative opinion.
Some of those surveyed were even actually offered the position they were interviewed for, but of those people, one in three ultimately turned the offer down, primarily based on the negative vibe they picked up during the interview.

The lessons of this survey, not conducted about a small business or start up where you might expect such mistakes to occur, but rather by a huge national communications company, are numerous. Aside from the fact that the company potentially loses a valuable employee and has wasted both time and money on the recruitment and interview process, there are also larger ramifications which can be applied to any firm, large or small.

Of the third who reported a negative interview experience, half said not only would they never consider applying for a job with the company again but they would also never purchase goods or services from the business again. Even more potentially damaging was the fact that almost every one of them said that they were likely to - or already had - shared the story of their experience with at least three to five other people. That is a lot of lost business and negative word of mouth marketing right there.

According to Michael Saile Jr, an injury lawyer in Pennsylvania, “You can avoid making such mistakes in your own company by ensuring that all your hiring personnel, even those that have been doing it for years, are up to date on current interview techniques, especially about what lines of questioning could be misconstrued as offensive or even illegal. These rules and regulations change all the time, so continuing education for any recruiter or interviewer is a must.”

It may even be money better – and very well – spent for your company to engage a company offering recruitment services to intervene in the hiring process and do much of the ‘legwork’ for you, helping to ensure that not only do you get qualified employees but that you protect the reputation of your company by leaving the initial stages of recruitment – including the more delicate demographic questions and background checks – to those who doing nothing but that for a living.