By Taylor Seabrook, Head of Talent & Employee Experience
When evaluating candidates, hiring teams often have a long list of skills, experiences, and qualities they would ideally like to see. But not every qualification needs to be present on day one. One of the most important parts of an effective interview process is understanding the difference between what is truly essential for success and what can be developed over time.
Before an interview process begins, hiring teams should identify the core competencies and skills that are critical to the role. These non-negotiables should then become a consistent part of how interviewers evaluate candidates. At the same time, distinguishing those requirements from “nice-to-haves” can help companies remain open to candidates who may not check every box but have the potential to grow into the role.
Watch the Video
[Taylor Seabrook discusses how hiring teams can differentiate between candidate non-negotiables and skills that can be trained and developed over time.]
Key Takeaways
- Identify the core skills and competencies required for success before the interview process begins.
- Define non-negotiables around both firm values and the requirements of the specific role.
- Train interviewers to consistently assess the competencies that truly matter.
- Separate essential qualifications from skills that can be coached or developed over time.
- Keep long-term potential in mind when evaluating candidates rather than focusing exclusively on what they can do today.
When defining non-negotiables, hiring teams should consider both the organization and the role itself. Firm values and core operating principles, such as integrity, strong judgment, collaboration, and emotional intelligence, can be just as important as technical skills when determining whether someone will be successful within an organization.
It is also important to recognize that some skills may be valuable without being immediate requirements. For example, a company may want to develop someone into a manager over time. Prior management or coaching experience could certainly be a nice-to-have, but if the role does not require those capabilities on day one, they may not need to be treated as a non-negotiable during the interview process.
Making this distinction before the interview process begins allows hiring teams to be more intentional in how they evaluate candidates. Rather than allowing individual interviewers to prioritize different preferences, everyone can focus on the competencies that are genuinely tied to success in the role and at the firm.
Ultimately, a strong hiring process is not about finding a candidate who checks every possible box. It is about identifying the qualities and capabilities that are truly necessary while recognizing where there is an opportunity to train, coach, and develop someone over time.
Building a More Effective Interview Process
Clearly defining non-negotiables and nice-to-haves can help hiring teams create a more focused and consistent interview process. By establishing these criteria upfront and aligning interviewers around them, companies can make better-informed hiring decisions while remaining open to candidates with strong long-term potential.
Transcript
Taylor Seabrook:
Whenever you’re interviewing a candidate, you always have to think about what’s really important versus what can be trained and coached later on. Before you even venture on an interview process, you should be thinking about what are the skills, what are the competencies that are really core to that job versus what can be trained and coached later on?
What are the non-negotiables? Those are the things you should be training your interviewers on to assess throughout the interview process. Non-negotiables are a combination of the firm values, the core operating principles that everyone needs to be successful at your firm, as well as the skills that are required for the job.
For us, those are things like integrity, strong judgment, collaboration, emotional intelligence. Certainly, there are other nice-to-haves that interviewers may think are really important. But I think you have to trade off on what’s really crucial to success at the firm, what’s crucial to success in the role, and then what can be trained and coached later on.
Maybe you want to develop somebody into a manager. They’ve had coaching or management experience before, but maybe that’s not something that’s going to be a crucial must-have in the interview process. Maybe it’s something that you’re developing and growing over time. That’s how I define the core competencies.
And I would say that happens before the interview process even kicks off.
About Taylor Seabrook
Taylor Seabrook is the Head of Talent & Employee Experience at Landing Point, where she oversees firmwide talent strategy, recruiting operations, and employee engagement initiatives. She partners with divisional leaders to identify and develop top talent, create performance frameworks, and foster a culture of growth and collaboration.
With more than a decade of experience in talent acquisition and higher education, Taylor brings both strategic vision and a people-first approach to Landing Point’s internal HR function. She previously led firm-wide recruiting at Viking Global Investors and served in admissions and advancement roles at Bowdoin and Brown Universities.
A graduate of Bowdoin College, where she studied Economics and served as captain of the women’s lacrosse team, Taylor is a champion of mentorship and team cohesion within Landing Point’s culture. She splits her time between New York and the Southeast, attending Clemson sporting events and spending time with her family and dog Crosby.