Many times in past articles and seminars I have stressed the poor validity of the unstructured interview in the selection process. Yet the unstructured interview is still the most common selection tool. Apart from being poor predictors of work performance, interviews are also the most underrated expense item of the selection process.
Because no “hard money” changes hands, managers see the interview process as a “freebie”. It’s just amazing that a selection tool that is so poor at predicting performance and chews up such a large chuck of expensive management time is still the most commonly used and most relied upon!
Why is it that interviews often fail to meet the needs of the organisation, and the people being interviewed?
The Illusions Of Easiness
Interviewing is a lot more difficult than people think, and many of these people think they are a lot better interviewers than they really are. There is a belief that interviewing is all about talking to people, and interviewing is just about good conversation. The selection interview is much more than a conversation, and good conversationalists aren’t necessarily good interviewers.
When hiring new employees, many managers think they can play the role of a psychologist. They believe they can “read” behind interviewees’ responses and know what they are really saying. Years of research have taught us that we are poor at “reading” people. This leads to the danger of the hiring manager believing he/she can assess the candidate’s personality fit with the role and the organisation, the old “I can pick ‘em when I see ‘em” approach.
Another reason people think interviewing is easy is that they do not distinguish between forming personal judgements and actually assessing a candidate’s competency. People form impressions of each other very quickly, these impressions are usually based on speech, dress, or mannerisms. Initial impressions are not necessarily right or wrong they are simply, impressions. The purpose of the interview, however, is to gather objective information that goes beyond first impressions. As the interviewer, your test is to predict the on-the-job performance of the candidate.
Good interviewing skills are not about judging character. You may think you are very good at this from the success you have had choosing friends, significant others or a spouse. The big difference here is these choices are made on, “do I like this person?”
Selecting a new employee is about making a decision based on the ability to do the job, and not on personal preferences.
The Strategic Approach
The strategic approach to interviewing provides managers with a systematic, research-based approach to interviewing. Camp, Vielhaber and Simonetti, in their excellent book Strategic Interviewing
- Develop realistic goals and manage the interview process (job analysis).
- Clearly define performance expectations (build a competency model).
- Ask questions about the candidate’s ability to meet performance standards (behaviourally based on each of the above competencies).
- Decide on the answers you want before you ask the questions.
- Maximise effective communication and accurate measurement (use more than one interviewer, take notes and rate answers).
- Use behavioural decision-making to predict the candidate’s performance on the job.
Interviewing is not easy. Very few managers have been trained and usually conduct an interview as they have been interviewed – poorly.
