1. What Is the Interview Process? The interview process is a multi-stage process for hiring new employees. The interview process typically includes the following steps: writing a job description, posting a job, scheduling interviews, conducting preliminary interviews, conducting in-person interviews, following up with candidates and making a hire. RELATED: Behavioral Interview Questions & Templates 2. Interview Process Steps & How to Improve Them There is much debate by industry professionals on the best ways to improve the interview process. And by improve, we mean attract and make better hires. One theory is that harder job interviews actually lead to better job matches - but is this true? It turns out, yes. Candidates who go through a rigorous interview process often find that the company places a high value on finding employees who are a good match for both the position and the company culture. Want to improve your company's interview process? Here are some steps to consider when structuring your interview process: The Phone Screener Phone interviews are an easy way to screen job seekers. In just a few quick questions, phone screeners allow you to vet a candidate and make sure they are a strong match skill-wise before you decide to invest further time in them. At this stage, you'll want to focus on high-level questions to make sure they meet the requirements of the role. RELATED: 5 Interview Questions to Get Quality Candidates in the Pipeline ASAP! The Skill Test Behavioral questions allow you to find the best fit for each role, and help you hire employees who can drive innovation, productivity, customer satisfaction and profits. Determine test objectives, e.g. personality, values, skills, etc. and decide how candidates will be moved forward or eliminated based on the results. The In-Person Interview At this stage in the interview process, you already know that the candidate is generally well-qualified for the role, so it's time to dig further into culture fit and work style. See if you can identify what motivates a candidate, what drew them to your company and how they work on a team, amongst other questions. The Group Panel By meeting with a variety of people, candidates get a comprehensive picture of the culture and the job itself, and team members get a strong sense of the contribution the job seeker will make as an employee. Make sure you prepare interviewers with the job description and the candidate's resume. Also, don't forget to identify a panel leader, and assign roles to each interviewer based on job function and/or expertise. The Candidate Presentation Team members will get a sense of contribution, skills and personality during a job seeker's presentation. However, you will need to make sure to be specific about the presentation topic to the candidate, and also determine objectives for evaluation of the presenter with the team. And don't forget to solicit feedback via a scorecard or a post-panel debrief. While adding extra hoops for candidates raises the perceived difficulty of job interviews, it also slows down the hiring process - which can lead to costly hiring delays and candidates lost to the competition. Before adding additional layers to interviews, it's important for employers to assure that each new screen actually helps identify great candidates, and doesn't just make interviews harder without any offsetting benefit. 3. Great Interview Questions to Ask Candidates Struggling to come up with interview questions to ask your candidates? These questions will help you find top talent fast: What attracts you most to this position and company? What was the best thing about your last job? Tell me about a time you had a difficult working relationship with a colleague. What was the challenge, how did you address the situation and what did you learn from the experience? What is a development area, a deficit, or a gap that you've had to overcome or improve in your career? How was that identified, and what did you do to improve? What are two of the most satisfying accomplishments in your career? Tell me about each of them. Do you have any questions for me? For more ideas on interview questions to ask, click here! 4. Conclusion Finding candidates who have the right skills and who are also great culture fits with the ability to weather adversity, manage stress, deal with ambiguity, work constructively as part of a team and demonstrate resourcefulness will serve you well in both the short and long term. Glassdoor's recruiting solution is a perfect tool to attract high-quality candidates to make your interview process more productive. After you attract high-quality candidates, it takes a little planning ahead - choosing which interview format you'll use, what questions to ask and who will ask them - but the payoff is high.