STUDENT AFFAIRS

Responsible party: Hiring manager 

• Create resume-review rubric that matches the job description. All questions and rubrics must be used for all candidates. 
  • Be specific. For example, for criteria about experience, establish what counts as transferable experience and how you will assess “intangible” skills. 
  • Sample rubrics
• Apply the resume rubric.   
• Continue to audit your biases. Ask how your assumptions might impact your rating, whether information supports your conclusions, and how you may be excluding the candidate 
• Gather views from multiple members of the hiring committee simultaneously and independently  

Prepare for Interview & Skills Assessment

Responsible party: Hiring manager 

• Disclose salary range early in the process, preferably when inviting candidates to interview, to confirm candidate interest. Sample email 
• Prepare interview questions 
  • Develop standard questions for each interview stage that match the job description. Structure all questions around the core competencies of the role.  
  • Create evaluation rubrics or “good answers” in advance so all interviewers are clear about what’s needed for the role. All questions and rubrics must be built on the job description and align with each other. All questions and rubrics must be used for all candidates. 
    • Sample rubric 1
    • Sample rubric 2
• Write behaviorally based questions (“Tell me about a time when...”) rather than hypothetical or philosophical questions. Ensure questions are direct and easy to understand; separate multi-part questions where possible as you ask, or pose the question in writing virtually or in printed form 
• Write job-related, equity-focused questions to assess skill and experience with racial justice. Examples from UW
  • How have you committed yourself to understanding and aiding in the pursuit of equity and inclusion in your professional and/or personal life? 
  • What steps have you taken to mitigate your biases in the workplace? 
  • What is your approach to including perspectives of colleagues from different backgrounds? 
  • Share a time when you advocated for diversity and inclusion in the workplace. 
  • In your experience, what are the challenges faced by members of marginalized and/or historically underrepresented groups in the workplace? What strategies have you used to address these challenges, and how successful were those strategies? 
  • Provide an example of a time when you identified a diversity-related issue in your organization. How did you address it?  
• Create skills assessments, if appropriate, to measure job-related abilities (e.g., presentation, data analysis, Excel, proofreading, creating a project timeline). Create rating rubric. Have SAHR vet the skills assessment and rubric.
• Skills assessments can give candidates with nontraditional experience/credentials an opportunity to shine while more directly predicting job performance. 
• Plan interviews realistically for candidate and committee member well-being. Consider interview length, breaks, meals, accommodations, evaluation turn-around time, who is necessary to include as an interviewer, and other logistics. 
• Create equal experiences for all candidates and avoid unstructured interviews, such as meals the night before the interview.  
  • To ensure candidates feel warmly welcomed, tell them why you might offer a gift card rather than dinner: we consider candidate wellness and avoid unequal structures. 
  • Alternative: non-evaluative “tell me about yourself” meet-and-greets for finalists; staff don’t share feedback, but if something concerning occurs, communicate it to the TA representative. 
• Have admin coordinator ask non-evaluative personal details (e.g., accommodations, dietary info, flight seat preference, and legal name, gender, and birthday for plane tickets) 
• To the extent possible, schedule the same interviewers for each candidate. 

Responsible party: Led by Hiring manager & Search chair, executed by search committee and stakeholders who will interact with candidates throughout the process 

• Provide each interview panel with standard questions, a position description, rating rubric, and resumes and cover letters. 
• Ask the same questions of all candidates to ensure fairness. 
  • Use probing follow-up questions to clarify ambiguous responses and ensure all applicants understand the scope of the question and answer as fully as they can. Use probing questions consistently as needed so that all applicants benefit consistently. 
    • Example: interview question - “tell me about a time when you designed and evaluated a program.” 
    • For a candidate who does not mention evaluation or states that they evaluated the program without explaining how, ask “How did you evaluate the program?”  
    • For a candidate whose answer is surface-level, ask “tell me more about what you mean by x” or “can you share more detail about the steps you took?” 
    • For a candidate who shares a program evaluation philosophy and no example, ask: “can you give me an example of when you applied those ideas?” 
    • Don’t ask leading questions, like “when you evaluated the program, did you use a rubric?" 
  • If you realize midway through interviews that a question needs to be clearer, do adjust the question for clarity, but don’t penalize earlier candidates. 
• Consider sharing questions/topics with candidates in advance to cater to different learning styles and offer candidates the best chance to be successful  
• Remind committee members to save their evaluation materials. 
• Communicate timelines to qualified candidates to keep them interested. Consider frequent updates as your search progresses through various steps.