Peer Interviews
What are Peer Interviews?
Peer interviews allow members who will be working closely with the candidate to sit on the panel. They may ask the interviewee questions that directly relate to the role’s daily duties. This helps evaluate for person-organization fit and whether the candidate will get along well with their future teammates.
Peer Interview Steps
Often structured, peer interviews offer interviewers the opportunity to interact with colleagues or team members to gauge a candidate’s soft skills, problem-solving capabilities, and cultural fit—offering both the interviewer and candidate valuable insights into team capability.
- Preparation – Both the interviewer and candidate review the job description and company values beforehand for role alignment.
- Introduction – The interviewer and candidate exchange brief introductions to establish rapport and set a comfortable tone for the conversation.
- Behavioral Questions – The candidate is asked questions focused on their past experiences to assess how they handle specific work situations.
- Skill Assessment – The interviewers look for technical or role-specific skills.
- Cultural Fit Evaluation – Interviewers gauge whether the candidate’s values and personality align with the team and company culture.
- Feedback – After completion, the interviewer shares their observations and provides the candidate an opportunity to ask questions about the team or work environment.
- Wrap-Up – Both parties summarize the conversation, and the candidate is informed about next steps in the hiring process.
Sample Peer Interview Questions for Different Jobs
Software engineer: How do you approach debugging when you encounter a complex issue in your code?
Marketing manager: Can you give an example of a campaign you worked on that had unexpected results? How did you adjust your strategy?
Product manager: Describe a time when you had to pivot a product strategy. How did you approach the change, and what was the outcome?
Customer support specialist: How do you stay updated on product changes to effectively assist customers?
Benefits of Peer Interviews
Peer interviews offer many benefits that regular structured or group interviews do not. For instance, they provide multiple perspectives that a single interviewer might otherwise struggle to come up with alone.
Moreover, peers from the candidate’s prospective department can better explain what the role’s day-to-day entails—the responsibilities and pacing of a usual workday in the open role. Other benefits of peer interviews include:
- Empowers employees to champion their organizational culture
- Can lower the turnover rate for new hires
- More open conversations about the nuances and day-to-day on the role
- Peers generally understand job factors that may sway top candidates’ decisions
Related Terms
Panel Interview
is a term that refers to a scenario where more than one company representative interviews one applicant. In panel interviews, the company representatives are usually from different departments and can include a human resources team member, hiring manager, and department supervisor for the available position.
Job Simulation
is a series of relevant tasks or assignments that candidates perform prior to being hired for a role.
Interview Scorecard
is a popular tool used to evaluate candidates based on pre-determined competency areas and criteria.
Group Interview
is a term that refers to an interview that consists of one or more company representatives interviewing multiple candidates simultaneously.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the hiring manager ever sit in on a peer interview?
Sometimes, the hiring manager joins the group or panel interview to observe and take notes in the background as colleagues converse with the candidate.This way, multiple perspectives are formed, providing a better understanding of whether the candidate is well-suited for the position.
What are some common peer interview questions?
General peer interview questions usually focus on how the candidate prefers to work, their ideal environment, what they enjoyed doing in their previous job(s), and how they communicate with other colleagues. The candidate could be asked questions about how their previous experience aligns with the responsibilities of the role they’re interviewing for.
How can interviewers keep the peer interview as fair and equitable as possible?
From interview scorecards to a consistent hiring process, interviewers can minimize hiring biases in many ways. They can engage in active listening, making sure there’s a balanced ratio of back-and-forth communication—a staple of interview intelligence, a tool that can offer real-time prompts related to speaking time distribution.
Under what circumstances should an employer conduct peer interviews?
Peer interviews hold the most effect when it comes to complex roles that require high emotional intelligence and problem-solving to communicate effectively across teams. Teams with frequent intergroup contact would also benefit from peer interviews.