How many interviews is too many for candidates?

What defines a good leader? Look for these six qualities

WHAT DEFINES A GOOD LEADER? LOOK FOR THESE SIX QUALITIES

Modern business challenges can require new approaches. Leadership will need to evolve in order to continue to guide organisations in tomorrow's world of work. But what are the characteristics of a good modern leader in the workplace - and how can organisations develop them?

Many studies draw parallels between effective leadership and solid organisational performance. But whether they’re a junior manager or a senior executive, the qualities that leaders need are changing.

Nearly 1,500 HR professionals ranked leadership development as the number one priority for 2025, with managers feeling 'overwhelemed' by the expansion of their responsibilities. In today’s unpredictable world, you must combine traditional leadership skills with new abilities. So, what does an effective modern leader look like?

1. Remember what makes a good leader

Before looking at the new skills future leaders may need, it is worth reflecting on what a leader actually is.

What are the qualities of a good leader? It’s not what you may think.

Being in charge of colleagues does not necessarily make you a ‘leader’. Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explains: “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”

Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield believes that good leadership is: “Not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it. Especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter.”

There may be varying opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of leaders. But overall, most people believe that great leaders motivate their team members to perform their best and achieve common goals.

What traits do you need to achieve this in the modern workplace?

2. Use blended leadership styles for a VUCA world

Stacey Philpot from Deloitte Consulting maintains that the core skills needed historically in leadership roles have remained unchanged.

“These skills allow someone to become a leader faster than their peers. This is even true in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment,” she says.

The core skills for leading in a VUCA environment include:

Pattern recognition
Motivation
Agility
Emotional intelligence
Ability to understand, control and express emotions

This represents psychological assessments of 23,000 senior leaders globally over the past 25 years.

Consider introducing servant leadership:

Leaders need new styles of leadership to deal with changing cultures. Being comfortable with not having the answer and owning failure can create an environment of trust and openness.

Collectively, these behaviours form ‘servant leadership’. The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) defines servant leadership as emphasising behaviours and values such as:

Active listening
Empathy
Leading by example

These are instead of opting for a more authoritative, ‘command-and-control’ leadership style. Leaders create the conditions for team members to excel by displaying vulnerability. But given the stigma around servant leadership, how can organisations encourage it?

How to combat stigma surrounding servant leadership:

Alsu Polyakova, HR Leader for GE Healthcare, says reducing stigma around servant leadership will take a specific strategy. Most importantly frequent performance appraisals for leaders.

“We give leaders lots of opportunities for self-reflection, so they understand how they behave,” she says. GE Healthcare’s most successful leaders help to encourage behavioural change, Polyakova says. The company measures success by how well employees rate leaders on achieving GE Healthcare’s ‘cultural pillars’. These pillars include inspiring trust and empowering employees.

3. Create a culture of trust in the workplace

Gaining workers’ trust is more important than ever. One way to build trust is for leaders to take action on issues such as climate change. 71 percent of employees consider their CEOs’ social awareness as critically important, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer.

Social awareness may yield rich rewards. The Edelman poll shows that workers who trust their employers are far more engaged and remain more loyal than their more sceptical peers.

Leadership styles are clearly changing. The most effective leaders will need to tailor their styles to suit different scenarios, says Professor Sattar Bawany. “Leaders need a broad repertoire of management styles and the wisdom to know when each style should be used,” he says. “In crisis scenarios like cybersecurity breaches, for example, leadership should be authoritarian because the scenario is unstructured.”

4. Adapt your leadership style for different generations

Managers must also balance leadership styles to suit different generations. Modern workplaces will soon house up to five generations under one roof. Therefore, there will be many people with differing preferences on leadership style.

As of 2023, millennials are the biggest group in the UK workforce, at 35 percent. Modern leaders must mix old and new leadership styles that meet the needs of younger generations. Doing so will future proof organisations. However, new leadership approaches cannot come at the expense of alienating older workers.

5. Commit to lifelong learning

With the workplace evolving so rapidly, leaders cannot rely on past experience alone to get by. Ben Farmer, Head of HR at Amazon UK agrees: “Experience is not always synonymous with wisdom and judgement. And naivety doesn’t always engender novel thinking and openness to change.”

Organisations should look for leaders who understand the future as well as those with experience. “Success comes from the ability to combine understanding of exciting, new trends with the experience required to put that knowledge into action,” says Farmer.

But what is the right balance? There is no one-size-fits-all approach when balancing experience with adaptability. Achieving the right balance will mostly depend on the organisation and the sector it operates in.

6. Be conscious of culture

Organisational culture is an important factor. Risk-averse firms may prefer experience over novel thinking. Leaders may be fearful of a backlash from stakeholders should novel thinking fail. To lower risk, companies should seek leaders who use both scientific evidence and intuition when making decisions.

Ultimately, there’s no single blueprint for an effective modern leader. Each organisation must tailor their approach to leadership development. There must be a focus on organisational culture, industry nuances and employee mix.

But above all, leaders should recognise that today’s reality may be old news tomorrow.

For more expert advice, take a look at the following articles:

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HOW MANY INTERVIEWS IS TOO MANY FOR CANDIDATES?

Innovations in technology are revolutionising the world of recruitment. And yet, some employers still maintain a lengthy application process. In some cases, job seekers need to endure a number of interviews (some hitting double digits) before receiving a job offer.

One such Australian organisation has a standard six-round interview process for all roles, regardless of seniority. Some applicants have experienced an interview process involving:

A functional interview
Skills interview
Cultural interview
Peer interview
Two video interviews

The job on offer was not a CEO position, but a standard mid-level role in a mid-size company. Many of the questions were repetitive, with little apparent communication from one interview stage to the next.

This begs the question, how many rounds of interviews is normal for modern businesses?

What factors should human resources and hiring managers consider?

How much time can we ask of candidates and interviewers?

We must consider the time commitment that companies expect from candidates. We must also think about how much time existing employees need to dedicate to conducting interviews.

Aim to set a maximum time limit for each candidate. You might ask for 3 one-hour interviews, or you could invite candidates for a two-hour aptitude test instead. Consider the most efficient approach to find out what you need.

What is the purpose of each interview?

Human resources and hiring managers should establish what they need to learn from each interview stage. What insights about a candidate's skills and experience can we learn from the fourth interview that we can’t obtain in the second?

Aim to define a unique purpose for each interview. You may want to merge several sessions into one if they achieve the same goal.

What influences a lengthy interview process?

Organisations may be displaying a level of arrogance regarding the level of interest in the role. Some organisations believe that the strength of their brand will attract candidates who are happy to go through a lengthy process. Or perhaps there’s a consensus culture in which people struggle to make decisions.

Consider why you require multiple rounds of interviews. Is there a clear purpose for each session? Or has the recruitment process, from job application to final interview, taken on a life of its own?

How is the hiring process changing?

Skills-based interview processes

Faced with ongoing skills shortages, organisations can no longer search for candidates using traditional methods. Hiring managers are trying new approaches, such as:

Skills-based hiring
Early in career development and recruitment
Hire-Train-Deploy models

Opting for a new strategy will impact how you interview candidates. Job seekers may not have directly relevant examples of their workplace skills and experiences, but will instead be drawing upon life experience. This changes the understanding of what the ‘perfect’ candidate looks like.

Outsourced recruitment processes

Working with external suppliers, like Enterprise Solutions at Hays, can save your interviewers a lot of time. Even if you maintain in-house interviews, you can offload much of the initial screening and assessment to a third-party recruitment provider.

Outsourced assessment and selection processes are particularly popular. This approach allows candidates to show aptitude beyond the static interview format, as well as illustrating to employers the scope of the applicants, including soft skills.

AI’s influence on the interview process

Leading authorities in recruitment now use AI to assist with filtering and selection. Technologies such as blockchain, for example, enable fast and accurate verification of work histories.

By adopting AI technology to enhance the initial screening process, we can make it more precise and more efficient. With a strong initial screening strategy in place, candidates that progress beyond this stage won’t need to jump through so many hoops.

Can we make the hiring process fairer?

There are always ways to make the hiring process fairer and more efficient for candidates and employers alike. A lengthy interview process is in itself unfair, alienating candidates who are unable to afford frequent time off from work, have care-giving responsibilities, or struggle to travel.

At Enterprise Solutions at Hays we can offer expert guidance on:

Creating the right job description to attract candidates.
Hosting initial phone interviews.
Planning and hosting in-person interviews.
Hosting pre-interview assessments.

The key questions job seekers are asking: how many interviews to get a job?

Two interviews are usually sufficient to gain all the necessary insights required to make a hiring decision. We also recommend some form of initial assessment to decide who gets to the interview stage, and occasionally, some follow up conversations to iron out the details.

So, do six interviews really result in better hires or people who stay longer and perform better?

Get in touch with our team to review and discuss opportunities to enhance your hiring process.

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