using dcyde.com for team interviews and decision hygiene
One of the most useful things Ben introduced me to at Collegiate Academies was the full-on team interview. One candidate gets a meal or sits around a conference room table with 4-6 of their prospective colleagues and talks through a bunch of common scenarios in the job, often with live role play. This experience is chock full of information for the candidate. It’s also a special opportunity to build culture and voice for the chosen interviewers.
For the last couple years, I’ve had teams use dcyde.com to give the candidate a rating out of five stars and a concise summary of the reasoning for their rating. I have liked using this for debriefing these team interviews and improving the group’s decision hygiene.
Here’s what it looks like:
Create a ratings poll on dcyde.com and send the link to everyone in the interview group. (5 mins)
Everyone rates the candidate out of 5 stars and types a short summary of their reasoning. (3-5 mins)
Everyone reads all of the anonymous ratings and summaries once they have been submitted. (3-5 mins)
Next, have the folks with the highest and lowest ratings reveal their identities and then talk through their ratings and their rationale. (2 mins)
Then, have someone who offered a median rating do the same. (1 min)
I have found that this approach leads to a richer conversation, better calibration among team members, and a much more robust appraisal of the candidate. It’s a nice way to check a bunch of biases at once.
Too often in group conversations, the first person who speaks establishes a narrow window of opinion for the rest of the group. Everyone who follows that first person averages their take against that first person’s take (or withholds their take altogether if it’s too different from the first one). Too often, the first person to speak up is not the person with the most informed or wisest take - it’s the person with the most confidence or power or the least grace or emotional poise.
This structure can get voices and insights into the conversation that might otherwise remain silent. You also get a sense of the full spectrum of opinion rather than just the socially palatable median.
Worth a try in your next team interview or group discussion!
-Eric
