Why Great Candidates Still Fail Interviews (and What Recruiters Can Do About It)

Enhancing the recruitment process for all involved

You found them. You identify talent, and they have it in spades. The CV is strong. They stand out from other candidates. The experience matches. You’ve spoken to the potential candidate at length, and you’re confident they can do the job. Your client agrees. The interview is booked.

Then, something goes wrong.

The recruitment candidate struggles to articulate their experience during the hiring process. The answers lack structure. They forget the brilliant example they discussed with you only days earlier. Nerves take over. The client chooses somebody else.

For specialist recruiters and recruitment professionals, it’s a painfully familiar scenario. Being the right person for a job and being able to prove it in an interview are two very different things.

What this creates is an interesting challenge for recruitment agencies. Once you’ve successfully secured a candidate an interview, how much influence do you really have over what happens next?

Join Interviewa now as we explore the reasons why candidates still fail interviews despite all the steps you have taken to screen them, ways you can enhance the recruitment process for all involved, and the solution to this all-too-common challenge.

Identifying common recruitment agency pain points

Understanding why recruitment candidates sometimes fall instead of fly is half the battle. The following four pain points in the recruitment and selection process are the ones recruiters mention most often. However, when you dig a little deeper, and you start to uncover the reasons why they happen, you can see the solution more clearly.

While hard skills refer to specific technical knowledge and certifications necessary for duties, soft skills are things like communication capabilities, temperament, and on-the-spot thinking. Develop those elements in the run-up to interview, and everybody wins.

The key to effective recruitment is preparation; but then, you knew that already.

The pain lies in preparation being time consuming, and trying your best to provide hands-on dedication, and personalised guidance to many candidates, within tight time constraints. Interviewa can help you solve these challenges.

Let's show you how.

Pain Point #1: Right Candidate, Wrong Interview Approach

There are plenty of reasons a strong candidate might underperform at interview. They may:

• Be nervous
• Struggle to think on the spot
• Give answers that are technically correct, but too vague
• Not have fully understood the job requirements
• Not present enough evidence of their skills to back up their claims
• Have underestimated the amount of preparation required

These things can afflict even the most experienced candidates. Someone who has spent years building an impressive career, for example, may understandably assume that their track record will speak for itself.

However, senior interviews can involve complex questions around leadership and management, commercial decision-making, strategy, and competencies. Having experience is only part of the equation. Candidates also need to communicate that experience clearly.

For you as the recruiter, this creates a frustrating disconnect. You identify candidates for roles every day, so you’ve already assessed their suitability. You’ve represented them to the client. You may even have discussed likely interview questions with the recruitment candidate, and given them advice.

However, none of that guarantees they’ll be able to deliver a compelling answer when somebody actually asks the question.

How Interviewa can help mould the ideal candidate

One great feature of the Interviewa platform is that it helps candidates refine their responses before the real interview takes place. Every aspect of the upcoming conversation, including likely questions that will be asked, and the requirements of the job description, can be programmed in, and then the intuitive AI avatar will interview the candidate as though it is the recruiter's client.

The mock interview is not a one-way recording, like your average AI video interviewing platform. It is a two way conversation, where the avatar hears and acknowledges the candidate's answers, then scores and analyses the interview as a whole, outlining areas of improvement, strong points to emphasise, and so much more.

This transforms you from a run-of-the-mill recruiter into a multifaceted success facilitator and interview coach, without adding meetings to your calendar, or mountains of additional admin to your workload. Your sourcing strategy already involved attracting talent through various channels like job boards and referrals. The more ways you can find to free up your time, the better. Interviewa does the work, then puts the power in your hands to guide the candidate, and support your client.

Pain Point #2: Knowing the question isn’t the same as answering it

One of the simplest forms of candidate preparation is sending over a list of questions that might come up.

That can certainly help; but, consider the difference between reading:

“Tell me about a time you managed a difficult stakeholder.”

…and actually having to answer it out loud. Without notes. While maintaining eye contact, organising your thoughts, remembering relevant examples, and making sure your answer demonstrates what you actually did.

Suddenly, it feels very different, doesn’t it?

That’s why interview preparation shouldn’t only be about helping candidates predict questions. It should give them an opportunity to practice the experience of answering them.

How Interviewa creates a space for practice

Practice creates a safe place to get it wrong. There’s a useful principle here, and that’s for the candidate to make their mistakes during practice, not in front of the client.

Imagine your candidate gives a weak answer during a mock interview. That isn’t necessarily bad news. In fact, it’s valuable information.

This is the opportunity Interviewa presents. Your candidate now knows where the weakness lies, and now, they can work on it before the real interview happens. Instead of heightened anxiety and a head full of self-doubt - "Maybe I didn’t fully explain my individual contribution clearly enough..." or "Perhaps I forgot to demonstrate the result of my strategy..." or "Maybe I don't meet the needs of the business or the position..." etc. - they have tangible guidance and useable data to steer them right before they get in front of your client.

Whatever the issue, the chance to course correct before it impacts the outcome is worth its weight in gold to anyone attempting to make their next career move.

Pain Point #3: Multiple candidates, not enough time

As you well know, recruiters already spend significant amounts of time preparing candidates to interview for their next role. The difficulty is providing that support consistently, and at scale.

If you have several candidates interviewing in the same week for various vacancies, can you realistically conduct two or three full mock interviews with every one of them? Probably not.

How Interviewa can expedite the recruitment and selection process

This is where AI-powered interview preparation creates an interesting opportunity. With Interviewa, candidates can access that preparation, on any smart device, 24/7. The can complete realistic, role-specific, mock interviews any time of the day or night. They have an actual conversation, as close to speaking to a real person as they can get, receive instant coaching, and can repeat the process as often as they need. The next time you catch up with them, they may have done this several times, and you have access to all the data this has generated, allowing you to apply your support in the areas it's needed most. This also speed the whole process up. In a fast-moving world, that holds value.

Interviewa understands that structured assessment methoids support fairer candidate comparisons, so the more information you have to work from, the better. Rather than replacing recruiter expertise, technology takes care of the repeatable part of the preparation. This frees you up as the recruiter to concentrate your attention where human experience adds the greatest value.

Pain Point #4: Recruitment candidates sounding rehearsed

While this might seem like a legitimate concern, there’s an important distinction to be made between practice and scripting. Good interview preparation isn’t about teaching somebody a perfect answer and asking them to memorise it. It’s about helping them to develop and organise their thinking.

A candidate who has reflected on their strongest examples and practiced communicating them should ultimately become more natural, not less.

How Interviewa can build confidence

Job interviews are unpredictable. Candidates can never know for sure how they will go. Interviewa acts as a tool for building confidence. Think about public speaking. Someone who has rehearsed a presentation several times generally appears more comfortable than someone reading it aloud for the first time. Interviewing works in much the same way.

Practice builds familiarity. Familiarity builds confidence. Confidence gives candidates more space to showcase themselves in focussed conversation, and to know which knowledge to call upon when put on the spot.

Preparation improves the recruitment candidate experience

Now we've explored the specific ways that Interviewa can enhance the whole process for you the recruiter, your candidate, and your client, lets shift focus for a moment to the ripple effect of providing this additional layer of service and support to those you work with.

Recruitment is relationship-driven. Prospective employers appreciate specialist consultants who do their due diligence and attract top talent. Candidates remember the agents and agencies who help them to navigate the volatile job market, and who genuinely seemed to care about their success. This is particularly true when that support goes beyond forwarding a job description and arranging an interview.

Giving shortlisted candidates access to personalised interview practice can become another valuable part of the service a recruitment agent provides.

It says, “We don’t just want to get you an interview. We want to help you perform when you get there.” That matters in a market where candidates can have strong relationships with multiple recruiters.

Giving recruiters greater visibility

There is plenty of talk about the lack of feedback that candidates receive from hiring teams; but limited feedback is something recruiters have lived with for years. When a candidate attends an interview and they’re unsuccessful, the client will maybe provide a sentence or two in an email, or sometimes nothing at all. 

With Interviewa, recruiters can view performance, strengths, development areas, and progress across various attempts. The aim isn’t for an AI score to replace recruiter judgement. It’s to give recruiters more information with which to make decisions on the right candidates.

Plus, if a candidate needs some additional, human coaching, you'll know exactly where to focus.

Identify talent and coach them beyond the job description with Interviewa

Recruitment teams and agencies invest an enormous amount of time and energy into getting candidates to interview. for that key role. They work closely with people to:

• Source
• Screen
• Qualify
• Advise
• Represent
• Coordinate

However, the final conversation still belongs to the candidate. Technology cannot, and should not, remove the human element from that moment. Used in the right way, it can make sure ideal candidates arrive better prepared for their interview.

Many organisations leaning on recruiter for hiring support will keep coming back if the quality and readiness of candidates is of a high standard. They are looking to strengthen and future proof their workforce, keen to fill open positions with responsible, top-quality candidates that will enhance their employer brand. They want individuals who are not only role-ready, but who present growth opportunities down the line. Since statistics suggest that 85% of job applicants lie on their CVs, What people say they can do, and how they come across, are two different things. Sure - reference checks confirm candidates' employment history and character. The interview is where the proof resides.

Presenting the best prospective candidates to your clients depends on your capacity to prepare potential employees. Sometimes the best candidates are the ones who put the time and effort into being ready for that next job interview. The difference between a great candidate who loses the opportunity, and a great candidate who gets the job, isn’t capability. It’s whether they were able to communicate that capability when it mattered.

Interviewa enhances the recruitment experience, giving candidates realistic, role-specific, AI interview practice, instant coaching, and the opportunity to improve before meeting your client.

If anything is going to help you stand head and shoulders above other recruiters, it’s that.

Want to see how Interviewa could help you provide an elevated experience to both your candidates and your clients? Reach out to our team today. Email [email protected].