Millions of employment interviews are carried out each year; virtually every Australian who enters the workforce will go through at least one employment interview and often many. And, no matter how you feel about interviewing, chances are good that you have approached it with less than a rigorous structure and reliable methodology. For many managers this crucial responsibility represents both a large investment of time and a tedious exercise that they approach without considerable forethought or regard for how they do it. This possibly explains why the interview can be the least predictive aspect of the selection process. Most people hire people they like, rather than the most competent person. Research shows that most interviewers make their selection decisions in the first five minutes of an interview and spend the rest of the interview rationalising their choice.
Prior to the 1980s, psychologists criticised employment interviews on the grounds that they were subjective, subject to bias, and most important, poor predictors of future job performance. Hundreds of studies of the employment interview had led to the conclusion that they were nearly worthless and that interviews often did more harm than good.
In the 1980s, researchers suggested that interviews could be improved by providing structure, specifically by focusing the employment interview on questions that highlighted the interviewee’s ability to make good judgments in a variety of situations. Without structure in your interview, you have a one in seven chance of getting it right.
Known by many names, most of which have the term behaviour in them, this structured interview technique is predicated on a simple premise: A look at the past provides a glimpse of the future; if you did it before, you will do it again. The basic script calls for the interviewer to prompt, probe or press the candidate to recall and describe in detail a real life incident that provides evidence of a skill or experience relevant to the new job. The fundamental precept is that there is a world of difference between talking about a good game, being there when it was played, and actually carrying the ball.
Behavioural interviews seek evidence that a candidate actually has behaved in the way they represent that they have. Rather than listening to an applicant espouse a love for teamwork, the interviewer asks, When was a time when you made a significant contribution to a team and did not get credit for it?
Instead of letting a candidate assert that she has strong organisational skills, the interviewer asks, How did you organise your week last week? Walk me through the planning and organising process step by step, in as much detail as you can.
When an interviewee asserts that he is a people person, the interviewer tests that claim by asking, Can you give me an example of a time when you had a conflict with a coworker over something that was job-related? If the applicant cannot think of a single disagreement, he could not possibly be a people person; he’s not interacting with anyone.
Or if you wanted to assess the candidate’s emotional maturity in the workplace, you might ask: Can you tell me about a recent time when you had to deal with a person who was nasty with you (or, who made you angry).
You explore whether the candidate has the quality you want by asking for a situation that would show you the candidate living that value. The real situations described by the candidate should show that he or she actually behaved in a way that demonstrates the characteristic you want in your new employee. And you probe, and probe, and probe. Avoid jumping to conclusions, or hearing what you want to hear and clipping the interview.
Avoid the so-called scenario questions. This is where you present a situation and ask, what would you do? This form of question can be a useful gauge of a candidate’s knowledge of a subject or understanding of an ideal response. The candidate’s answer does not necessarily have any predictive validity, indicating the likelihood that they would actually follow their own script. You might be getting the business equivalent of a well-crafted fairy tale. Follow it up with this question: What is a similar example from your own life? Bear this simple truth in mind when spinning out scenario questions: Hypothetical questions generate hypothetical answers.
The well-executed past-behaviour-based interview is light-years ahead of where most hiring interviews were in effectiveness just a few short years back. Truly understanding the candidate is worth every moment of time you invest in the process. You bet your career, and some chunk of your mental health on every person you hire. You want to be very, very sure who that person really is. After all, you would not marry someone after just a one hour conversation, would you?
Reference: Krajewski, H.T., Goffin, R. D., McCarthy, J. M., Rothstein, M.G., & Johnston, N.(2006). Comparing the validity of structured interviews for managerial-level employees: Should we look to the past or focus on the future?. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 411-432.
