Is there such a thing as an Interview Consultant?

TechGromit

After reading Iris's post about the State of the IT industry got me thinking, is there such a thing as an Interview Consultant? For example, lets say your looking to hire a Network Engineer to support your company and currently do not have someone one staff with that title. It could be the former employer left before you could find a suitable replacement, or he got hit by a Bus, regardless of the reason, you do not possess the technical expertise to ensure a potential candidate knows what they claim to on there resume. This is where an Interview Consultant would come in, you would hire them to sit in on interviews and pitch technical questions at the interviewee to see how they answer. Of course you would hire a different consultants for different types of positions, I wouldn't expect a Cisco consultant knows all that much about programming, so you would hire a consultant that has expertise in the skill set your looking to hire for. From what I read on Google, there appears to be interview consultants that assist you in passing the interview process as the interviewee, but I'm looking at things from the employers side of the interview process.

networker050184

There are a couple companies trying to fill this space. Eteki being the most recent I've heard of.

Master Yoda

networker050184 wrote: »

There are a couple companies trying to fill this space. Eteki being the most recent I've heard of.

They're highly reputable tons of companies use them now. I've had an interview w/ someone who worked for them screening me. It's via video conference typically, at least in my area. He was extremely knowledgeable knew what questions to ask and the company had no idea what they actually needed but he knew exactly what to ask and how to fill the position. Just think about how much time & hassle this saved said company. I thought it was industry changing myself.

OctalDump

I don't know if these officially exist as a product you can buy, but I've been for a couple of interviews where they had someone external on the interview panel. One was an IT manager role, and I think they guy they had worked for another company one of the directors had an interest in. The other was for a technical role, and they had someone from a different business unit (very separate within the organisation) but equivalent to what would be my manager.

I've also given advice to companies hiring technical staff on what they should be looking for in the job listing/resume phases, although I was not involved in the interview process.