What is the right number of candidates that should make it to the final interview stage?

Is it 2-4 candidates?

3-5?

Or just 1?

There is no magic number and if you’re beholden to rigid policies and guidelines you’re going to miss out on the most talented people and let me explain why.

We recently completed a search where the location was in a fairly rural area of the country.

Beautiful….. but rural!

The reality is this company was the only employer in the area where these specific skills were applicable.

So unless someone was going to spend the next 25 years of their career in this role…..

In this location……

Any candidate would be looking at not one relocation but two and that was a major hurdle to finding the right person.

Now this company could have considered other options like a hybrid model where this person could have been in the office every other week to increase the candidate pool.

They decided full time, in the office, every week was a mandatory requirement.

When you have this kind of restrictive aspect of a search you have to be more flexible in other areas.

In this case I was able to identify someone who met the qualifications.

Was truly interested in the role

…..and was willing to move their family up to this rural part of the country, knowing they would most likely have to make another move at some point in their career.

The issue was the company wanted another candidate to compare to this person, who for all other purposes was a great fit.

In this particular case they waited so long to try to find a second candidate that they nearly lost the first.

…..and therein lies the problem.

If you stay beholden to the idea that you need X number of people for the final interview you run the risk of losing the best available person for the role.

I’m not advocating you settle for underqualified people.

I’m  suggesting that it’s bad policy if you find the right person and the only thing preventing an offer is the lack of a comparison to another candidate.

So like many other things in recruiting and in life the real answer is less about the actual number and more about the idea of “It Depends”

How many great candidates are you willing to lose just to meet a predetermined policy?