Other than the manager, who should conduct interviews?

Question

I suspect I'm reaching a conundrum at the company I work for.

A colleague of mine (let's call her Alice) just gave her notice and the company is inclined to hire a replacement soon. So far, so good. Her job is pretty technical and has a lot of interfacing to me. I am quite confident in my knowledge in her field of work, but we have a non-technical manager (let's call him Bob) who assigned Alice to the task of conducting preliminary interviews with prospective replacements. Bob's reasoning is partially that to hire talent with the appropriate background, Alice should sort through CVs and conduct interviews initially, and he'll call some candidates for a second interview with himself and with HR after Alice's approval.

This seems a bit odd, as I would expect to be involved in this hiring process. I might be overthinking, but maybe Bob has some hidden reason to want me out of this process. My motivations to be involved and either conduct or participate in initial interviews basically are "I'm as good as Alice to do it" and "I'll have to interface with the person later". I don't really think this qualifies as good enough to conclude that I should have a say on who gets hired or not, but it also annoys me that a quitting employee has that much decision power over this subject. Alice will not be here to deal with this person later, and if the hiring isn't successful, there's a great chance that I'll have a pretty big headache dealing with the situation. Also, due to the notice time and hiring process at the company, Alice will not be able to train the new employee, who will arrive only after she leaves.

The questions:

1- How should I approach management about my concern?

2- Is it normal practice to have a leaving employee conduct interviews for his replacement?

3- Other than the direct manager of the new employee and HR, who usually conducts or participates in job interviews at a company?

Answer 1

1- How should I approach management about my concern?

Rather than waiting for them to suggest it, bring it up yourself. "Since I'll be working heavily with New!Alice I think it would be worth me getting involved in the hiring process"

2- Is it normal practice to have a leaving employee conduct interviews for his replacement?

It's not especially unusual, in cases where the parting is amicable the outgoing employee is often ideally placed to know who would be suitable for the role. I've certainly done it myself on occasion.

3- Other than the direct manager of the new employee and HR, who usually conducts or participates in job interviews at a company?

Can't really answer this one - there's too many variables to consider. For technical roles it's not unusual to bring someone in to evaluate that aspect (where the manager is non-technical) but who that would be varies massively depending upon who is best placed to do that. I've even had participants who would ultimately be reporting to me perform this before!

This seems a bit odd, as I would expect to be involved in this hiring process. I might be overthinking, but maybe Bob has some hidden reason to want me out of this process.

I'd err on you overthinking here. Without a wider pattern of Bob shutting you out then unless there's Very Good Reason^TM why Alice would be incapable of doing this it's quite likely his thinking was along the lines of "Alice knows the role best." I can't speak to yours and Alice's roles but there's probably half a dozen people in my current organisation that I "interface with heavily" but wouldn't have the first clue how to determine if a candidate could do my role.