Worst way to choose a candidate? Interview them.

The most frequent response we get from candidates sent to a client interview is that the interviewer did all the talking. Presidents are the worst offenders! They don't ask many questions but spend the interview time singing the praises of their company. Maybe not always, but it's been that way for the last 25 years.

When the interviewer dominates the conversation, a couple of things go wrong.

1. When you talk, you're investing emotionally in the candidate. From then on, you'll tend to discount negative information. Eg.,, reference checks that are marginal, testing results that show weakness and the findings of your other managers who interviewed the candidate will have a reduced impact.
2. When you talk, you don't learn anything. Everything you're saying you hopefully already know. (I realize that doesn't always hold true.) Having the candidate learn about you is the opposite of what interviews are for.
3. It makes you sound needy. Candidates will wrongly get the impression your company is selling hard, because it can't fill the position. It makes negotiating a final job offer that much more difficult.
4. The really big problem is that interviews, as a way of predicting a candidate's success rate, are terrible. Interviews are only 14% effective. More correctly, interviews fail us 86% of the time!

What to do. Most companies use three predictive tools, including testing, reference checking and interviewing. Here's how well each of these tools works for you.

       Testing for ability             53% most accurate
       Testing for personality     38% accurate
       Reference checking         26% accurate
       Interviewing                    14% least accurate

The best way of understanding the true capabilities of any candidate is to combine all three. Do each step thoroughly and the numbers say you could be over 80% correct in your hiring decisions.

Many people, myself included, rely heavily on interviews. I find these numbers counter intuitive, but it is what the research says. Interviews are only 14% accurate when it comes to predicting employee performance.

If you have questions about management issues or hiring choices, write me an email.

Make better people choices, build better companies.

Regards,
Wolfgang
Partner

1. Note: Think Tank for senior managers, October 24th, Terminal City Club, Vancouver. Subject: How to Negotiate Agreement and Negotiation. This is a small group event. Phone 604-931-6813
2. Source: These numbers may vary between researchers but interviewing tends to remain the least effective predictive tool while testing, in it's varied forms, tends to be the most accurate predictor of future performance. These numbers above were taken from the book "Hire the Best" by M. Mercer PH.D. He shows them as being taken from five different research sources.