At a company I worked at in the past we had a "champions" rule:

1. First, only select few interviewers with a great track-record could be a "champion".

2. If this interviewer was going against the rest of the interview panel, they could choose to be that interviewee's "champion". This means they are essentially saying "I have such a strong conviction that this person will do well that I'll put my professional reputation on the line for them." E.g. this person agreed to be that person's mentor when they started, and if things went south they would carry the burden of additional mentorship or finding the least problematic way to fire that person.

I've read before -- though right now I can't think of the source -- that if a group of interviewers are weakly against a candidate but one is strongly for them, you should trust the instincts of the person who's "strongly for." When hiring, I'd probably have that than a room of people who are weakly for a candidate on the basis that you'd rather have a person who's great at one thing than someone who's okay at everything.

Are there any books on this topic that anyone would recommend? As a manager, this is where I struggled the most - naturally i am someone who strives to be a consensus builder, but it's hard to know when to put your thumb on the scale vs not.

> Are there any books on this topic that anyone would recommend? As a manager, this is where I struggled the most - naturally i am someone who strives to be a consensus builder, but it's hard to know when to put your thumb on the scale vs not.

I cannot recommend a book about this topic (both because I don't know any and for the reason that I'll explain below), but have you considered that exactly because you are a consensus builder, this idea might not very well for you (i.e. it is simply not a good match for your leadership style)?

I, for example, am rather the opposite of a consensus builder. On the other hand, I typically immediately look through any bullshit claims that, for example, salesmen or business consultants tell about what they offer (seriously: a successful business consultant once told me that all the sales tricks that work well on C-level executives completely fail on me; I am a cruelingly hard sales target). How do I do that? Simple: I just think through all the logical implications that a claim has: if it is "too good to be true", it is nearly always fraud - and I want to call this fraud out. So I start questions about the logical implications that I found ... well, this typically does not turn out to be comfortable for the fraudster ...

In this sense (to answer your question and also answer why this answer likely won't work for you): you should put your thumb on the scale if the candidate is a fraudster (the huge majority of people are!). And this is exactly the reason why I don't believe this will fit your management style: you say you are a consensus builder. Calling out fraudsters in my opinion rather requires a deep will from inside to rather bring fraudsters/deceivers into jail, which is rather the opposite of building a consensus.

But if you nevertheless, despite my warning concerning your management style, want to read books and practice this skill:

- Read books about deeply scientific topics (e.g. how some theory was state of the art, then some cleverly designed experiments were done: in which sense did they make clear that this theory was wrong and to which new theory did this experiment lead?). After that download some arbirary slide decks or research studies from some business consulting company and find lots of locations in the text where they deceive the reader of things they won't be able to deliver.

- play/read the visual novel Umineko When They Cry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umineko_When_They_Cry) - it is in some high-level sense about thinking deeply about scientific explanations for what seemingly cannot be explained by science (which - in the story - "proves" that witches thus exist).

Read this and you will understand why consensus often doesn't make sense in hiring: https://erikbern.com/2020/01/13/how-to-hire-smarter-than-the....

The point isn't that only one person is the decider. When someone trusted has a very strong conviction about a hire, it may be worth rolling the dice.

You might take lots of peoples opinions into account but that doesn’t mean you should do so by majority vote. Some of those people may have been more confident than others. And it could make sense to allow for more variance in hiring (eg for hiring interns, or at an investment bank or big law firm where many new hires are sent out after a year so the cost of a bad hire isn’t so high)

She’s probably the most senior one. So she can override anyone but doesn’t always do it.

Or, 7/8 people were "weak no", they heard her argument, then changed their minds to "weak yes."

The whole point of a committee is to reach consensus. I've flipped my beliefs on many candidates before after hearing what other interviewers think. I think most of us understand that interviews aren't exactly the best way to judge a candidate - at least I think that way. So I'm pretty open to forming consensus when I'm "weak" and they are "strong" in opinion (especially if I respect their judgement).

Depends on why they "pass" - it might be "They're solid, but not a good fit for my specific team". Assuming each interviewer is focused on their specific group and the skills they actually use and need day-to-day.

Different groups requiring different skillsets certainly isn't unusual.

This happened after the manager already demonstrated a track record of 100% for picking candidates that turned out to be good. This happened in situations were the "hire" count was the majority.

I do also agree with you that "only one person gets to decide" is a bad idea in general (and is usually a red flag for someone trying to be a dictator).