Today’s employees are being pursued by large technology companies and startups alike, making recruiting top talent highly competitive and difficult. Companies looking to gain a competitive recruiting edge need to create a thoughtful interview process that sets their organization apart and focuses on how candidates will perform and grow in the company.

Greylock Talent Partner Dan Portillo sat down with Twitter Head of Revenue Engineering Wade Chambers to outline the best interview process to attract and retain talent.

To find and retain the best teams, hiring managers should evaluate candidates on a more personal level by exploring their level of curiosity, applied intelligence and work values.

Oftentimes, recruiters make the mistake of putting technical competency above all else during the recruitment process. While technical understanding is important, it’s not always the best indicator of how well a candidate is going to perform and grow in the organization.

In an effective interview, the goal is to assess the candidate’s self-awareness while trying to understand their own strengths, and helping them better understand the company and the open role.

Moreover, reference checks can be the most important part of the process. They uncover previous responsibilities and help determine what kind of environment has shaped the candidate’s most and least successful work in the past.

They help the hiring manager understand how well the candidate takes feedback, if the candidate is open to taking on new challenges, and if any mentoring or coaching is needed. Recruiters and hiring managers should have open conversations about the candidate’s skills and how their skills will translate to the needs of his team.

Lastly, culture fit is key to an employee’s retention and long-term career at a company. Culture fit is not about finding the perfect person, but finding someone who aligns with the company values. “For cultural fit, I look for people who have similar values as the organization,” says Wade Chambers. “They value learning. They value growing. They value the struggle. They value the lessons learned that come from that. They value being able to lift where they stand and drive things forward.”

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