NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The data are overwhelming -- job
interviews are a terrible predictor of success. Yet virtually every person
reading this article will insist, "That may be true for others, but it's
not true for me." You're wrong. You don't know how to interview job
candidates either.
Myth 1: We Know Whether We Are Good
at Interviewing
A person's belief that he can accurately assess another
person is not at all correlated to his actual ability to do so. It seems that
we don't let our competence affect our confidence.
Myth 2: Smart People Are Great at Interviewing
Medical school professors are some of the smartest people in
society. Yet a study found no correlation between medical school interview
scores and success in medical school. The relationship was actually negative,
but nonsignificant. One wonders what the professors' reaction was to these
data; they are scientists after all. Did they blame themselves?
Myth 3: A Structured Approach Will Improve Selection
Accuracy
On my first job at a consulting firm, I was assigned to
coordinate the new consultant hiring process. We decided to organize a Saturday
session where 10 candidates were each assessed in five competency areas (e.g.,
quantitative, analytical) by five interviewers, round-robin style.
At the end of the day, we held an interviewer's roundtable
to select candidates. As we reviewed the first candidate, the
"quantitative skills" interviewer said, "She has no quantitative
skills at all!" Another said, "She has a master's degree in math from
MIT!" The interviewer replied, "She does? Well ... she has no
quantitative skills at all!" And so it went.
Myth 4: Experience Creates Great Interviewers
Being an interview skeptic, I recently advised two sales
executives to conduct an outsourced assessment for a new sales director
candidate. Both were highly offended. Each said that he had interviewed
hundreds of candidates in his career and could accurately differentiate good
and poor candidates.
We
went ahead as usual. I screened several candidates and recommended a man named
Harris. The first executive interviewed Harris and said that he would
definitely succeed in the role. The second said Harris would definitely fail. I
met with the executives together and said, "There is a truth here. Harris
will either fail or not fail. That means one of you is wrong." Both
insisted it was not him.
In 2002, Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, won a Nobel Prize
in economics for
his work on judgments and decision-making.
As a young soldier, Kahneman participated in a high
potential assessment exercise where a team of assessors observed and rated a
group of soldiers in a physical exercise to determine leadership
potential. The assessment process was rigorous.
Every few months the assessment team received a new round of
performance ratings that made it possible to correlate simulation ratings with
actual performance. Kahneman writes, "The story was always the same. Our
ability to predict performance was negligible. Our forecasts were better than
blind guesses, but not by much."
Their evidence made it clear that their leadership
assessment did not work. It should have been scrapped, but it was not. It
should have reduced the confidence of the assessors to make accurate decisions,
but it did not. They just kept using it.
It is possible to greatly improve the success of new
hires by focusing on three areas: 1. technical/professional skill assessment;
2. leadership behavior; and 3. on-boarding.
Technical/professional skills. Technical interviewing skills can be learned, and
interviews should be conducted by an in-house panel interview. Panels provide a
quality check on the assessment. Use a structured interview where questions are
determined up front. For example, "Tell me how you would design a wireless
network with the following parameters ..."
Make the technical interview your first step. If the
candidate does not have the basic skills for the job, eliminate him or her
immediately.
Leadership behavior.
Behavior is more difficult to accurately assess than technical skills. But
leadership behaviors can be effectively assessed by an expert through a 3- to
4-hour interview.
Some might say that cultural fit must be assessed by an
internal manager. But if internal managers can do that so well, then why do
several managers come up with different fit assessments? It's because culture
is not operationalized. An external firm will help you operationalize your
culture and then assess for fit.
For
front-line and middle-manager assessments consider Development Dimensions
International, Personnel Decisions, Inc. or SHL. For
executive selection try ghSmart, Hay Group or Korn Ferry
International(KFY_). The experts will
assess: leadership style, teamwork, political saavy, influence skills, etc.
Kohlberg
Kravis Roberts(KKR_) is the private equity
industry pioneer, and its executives are some of the smartest people on Wall
Street. Certainly they should know how to assess managers. But KKR knows its
limitations and uses ghSmart to assess its new executives. The ghSmart process
is a four-hour behavioral interview plus rigorous reference checks. The company
provides a 50-page summary report with verbatim quotes.
It is critical to note that the external firm provides relevant
data for the manager to make an informed decision. Hiring decisions must never
be outsourced. This is similar to strategy consulting. Information collection
may be outsourced, but the choice of a strategy is not. On-boarding. Too often the right person was selected, but fails because of an inability to be integrated into the system of the organization. The "system" is how things get done. A key part of on-boarding is pre-hire stakeholder interviews. On-boarding begins before the hiring decision. To prepare each stakeholder, present the technical and leadership behavior data before their interview. It is possible that the interviewer may find new data to reject the candidate, but the purpose of these interviews is buy-in more than assessment.
Typical
employment
interviews are not effective predictors of future job performance. Let's lower
our pride and admit that we are the problem. We can do better.
Presented by Michael Salisbury www.hralliance.biz
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