I went to school for journalism. I bartended my way through college.
Between those two things, I got very good at talking to people. Strangers, regulars, sources, anyone.
So when someone casually suggested I look at a recruiter role, it did not feel wild or intimidating. Talking to people was already my thing. I said yes.
And honestly, I thought I was doing a great job.
The conversations flowed. Candidates opened up. Interviews felt easy. I walked out of most of them thinking, that went well.
What I did not understand yet was that easy does not mean effective.
I was not really interviewing. I was having conversations and trusting how they felt.
I did not know how to ask questions that revealed capability. I did not know how to listen for patterns or signals that predict performance. I paid attention to who felt comfortable, who I liked talking to, who seemed easy to imagine working in our group.
I mistook chemistry for signal.
And because no one had ever taught me how to interview, I had nothing to measure myself against. No framework. No shared definition of what good looked like.
So the confidence stayed.
I was interviewing people anyway.
That is the part leaders should consider.
Hiring Risk Does Not Live Only in HR
Most organizations assume hiring risk lives with HR or recruiting. In reality, hiring risk lives with anyone who speaks to a candidate.
Hiring managers. Panelists. Peers. Executives. Cross-functional partners.
Every one of those conversations shapes the decision to hire, the candidate’s perception of the company, and the organization’s legal and ethical exposure.
Yet most of those people have never been taught how to interview.
They are pulled into the process because they are good at their jobs, senior enough, or available. Not because they know how to evaluate talent.
So they default to what feels natural.
They assess likability. They look for familiarity. They trust gut instinct.
Not capability. Not motivators. Not patterns of behavior.
Why Untrained Interviewing Breaks Hiring
Interviewing feels like a conversation. In reality, it is an assessment skill. Treating it casually is where hiring quietly breaks.
When interviewing is treated as an assumed skill, the same problems show up again and again.
People confuse performance with assessment
Being good at the job does not mean being good at evaluating others.
Without structure, interviewers confuse confidence with competence and communication style with capability. Strong storytellers are rewarded. Quiet, capable candidates are overlooked.
Interviews become inconsistent and impossible to compare
Each interviewer asks different questions. Each values different traits. Feedback turns into vague statements like “I just did not feel it” or “something seemed off.”
Decisions become difficult to defend because there was never shared criteria initially.
Managers hire versions of themselves
When guidance is missing, people gravitate toward what feels familiar. They choose candidates who think like them, communicate like them, or share similar backgrounds.
This limits diversity of thought, reduces innovation, and creates teams that struggle when conditions change.
Ownership quietly disappears
When hiring is framed as HR’s responsibility, managers wait. They wait for resumes instead of defining what success actually looks like. Bad hires feel like bad luck instead of predictable outcomes.
None of this comes from bad intent. It comes from a lack of training.
More Process Will Not Fix This
When hiring breaks down, most organizations respond by adding more.
More interview rounds. More panelists. More tools. More technology.
What they rarely do is slow down long enough to define what they are actually trying to evaluate.
Without shared criteria, more process only creates the illusion of rigor. Candidates go through additional steps, but interviewers are still relying on instinct.
More steps do not create better hiring decisions. Better signals do.
What It Means to Teach the Whole Team to Interview
Teaching your whole team to interview does not mean turning everyone into a recruiter.
It means creating shared standards so every interviewer knows how to contribute responsibly.
At a minimum, anyone involved in hiring should understand:
- What the role actually requires
- What strong performance looks like in practice
- How to ask behavior-based questions
- How to separate capability from confidence
- What they can and cannot legally or appropriately discuss
- How to document and communicate feedback clearly
This is not bureaucracy. It is empowerment.
What Changes When Teams Are Taught to Interview
When interviewing becomes a shared skill, hiring stops being subjective and starts being defensible.
Teaching interviewing as a shared skill changes the hiring process in practical, measurable ways.
Interviewers ask better questions because they know what they need to hear. Feedback improves because it is anchored to capability instead of preference. Decisions move faster because teams are evaluating against the same standards.
Candidates feel the difference too. Conversations become clearer and more consistent. Expectations are set earlier. Offers feel more credible.
Mis-hires decrease. Onboarding improves. Retention follows.
Hiring stops feeling like luck and starts feeling intentional.
The Payoff of Shared Interviewing Skills
When interviewing becomes a taught, shared skill, the impact is immediate.
Decisions get faster because criteria are clear. Feedback becomes actionable. Mis-hires decrease. Onboarding improves because expectations were aligned before the offer was made. This also decreases the turnover during the first 90 days.
Hiring stops feeling like luck and starts feeling intentional.
What Leaders Should Do Next
This does not require a complete overhaul of your hiring process.
It requires clarity and ownership.
Leaders should:
- Decide what good performance actually looks like before interviewing begins
- Define the capabilities and behaviors they are hiring for
- Give interviewers guardrails on what to ask and what not to discuss
- Teach basic behavioral interviewing skills
- Expect clear, evidence-based feedback
When leaders treat interviewing as a core skill, teams follow.
The Real Point
If someone is trusted to influence a hiring decision, they should be trusted enough to be trained.
If your whole team does not know how to interview, you do not have a hiring process.
You have a guessing game.
And guessing is not a strategy.
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