Job interviews are flawed. Here are improvements your organization should consider

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Job interviews are in many ways the foundation of our organizations.
Interviews are a customary – and usually critical – element of the selection process for everybody working in the organization. After that, of course, people are trained and other factors determine promotions and organizational success. But at the start, interviews are almost always required and often determinative. What if that foundational element is weak?
“The sobering reality is that interviews only explain about 9 per cent of the variance in future job performance. In other words, 91 per cent of what determines how well someone will do in a job is completely missed by the interview process,” Llewellyn E. van Zyl, a professor of psychology with the North-West University’s Optentia Research Unit in South Africa, writes in Psychology Today.
Interviews are not valid tools to assess people’s capabilities and the illusion that it is an accurate tool is costing businesses dearly, he argues. The illusion results from what he calls “the myth of the perfect interview question.” Many of us believe that if we just ask the right questions, we’ll uncover the truth about a candidate. That has led us to craft behavioural questions, situational judgment scenarios and technical assessments that we are convinced reveal the perfect person for the job.
But he insists research tells a different story. “Whether we’re trying to assess behaviours, task-related skills or interpersonal abilities, interviews show surprisingly low levels of accuracy. Both structured and unstructured interviews fail to predict a candidate’s potential performance. Further, interviews are equally mediocre at predicting both task-specific skills and broader contextual behaviours,” he says.
Another problem he cites is that interviews are heavily influenced by our unconscious biases. Even with structured formats and scoring systems, we’re all susceptible to making snap judgments based on factors that have nothing to do with job performance. A candidate’s appearance, speaking style and apparent charisma, or even how familiar they are to us, can unconsciously sway our decisions. We can become suckers for someone who fits neatly into the current culture, rather than looking to diversify or shake up that culture.
Organizations brag about winning the talent wars. But if the odds of an interview predicting success are loaded against you, maybe it’s more accurate, and less arrogant, to consider winning the talent wars as a crap shoot.
He recommends improving your odds through these steps:
Recruiting specialist John Sullivan says although you should continue conducting interviews, you must reduce the interview portion where you make subjective candidate assessments based on their answers to traditional interview questions that can be practised in advance. “Unless you are a trained psychologist, it also means that you must stop trying to assess the candidate during interviews in areas that simply can’t be accurately assessed (for example, attitude, energy, commitment, honesty and intelligence). That also means that interviewers must stop trying to assess a candidate’s facial expressions, body language, handshake, eye contact, dress and tone of voice,” he writes on his blog.
He also suggests shifting from behavioural interview questions to “how will you act today” questions. Behavioural questions are historical, about how the individual acted at another time and in a completely different organization. Instead, probe how the candidate would act today. Sample questions:
That helps understand how the individuals will handle job-related tasks, duties and situations. But for professional jobs you also want to present them with scenarios that indicate how the candidate goes about solving a problem. Samples:
Mr. Sullivan also recommends trying peer interviews, in which the team members, as a group, conduct a separate interview without the manager present with each of the top two finalists for a key job. Peer interviews have been successfully used by some top companies and in the selection of nurses. Peers are well equipped to make an accurate candidate assessment because they live the job every day. And Mr. Sullivan argues peer interviews will also dramatically improve your ability to sell a top finalist candidate on accepting your job if offered, since they have a feel for who they will be joining.
Strengthen your foundation with some of these improvements to interviews and additional approaches.
Cannonballs
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.