You’ve read the job applications and narrowed down the field of potential hires to a select few. Now it’s time for the ever-important job interviews, which should tell you almost everything you need to know about the job candidates.
It seems that beyond job applications, it’s the job interview where employers truly feel they’ll get a sense for who a candidate really is, and therefore be able to decide if the person would be a fit for the company. That’s where they might be wrong, though.
In the New York Times article, “The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews,” author Jason Dana, an assistant professor of management and marketing at the Yale School of Management, revealed research he and his colleagues had conducted regarding interviews.
“Research that my colleagues and I have conducted shows that the problem with interviews is worse than irrelevance: They can be harmful, undercutting the impact of other, more valuable information about interviewees.”
Yowza.
One experiment found that students interviewing other students (and then asked to predict their GPA for the following semester) had more accurate predictions for students that they hadn’t met with. Meaning that the interviews that had been conducted weren’t a true indicator of future success.
Researchers took their experiment one step further. Some interviewees were instructed to answer their questions randomly—but not one interviewer noticed anything different.
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In fact, the student interviewers reported that they got to know their subjects on a slightly higher average than the interviewees who had answered honestly.
Still, people persist in believing in the importance of the interview. A final group of student subjects were informed of the entire experiment, and then were asked to rank in importance the following info: honest interviews, random interviews (where the subject supplied odd answers), or no interview at all.
Having no interview to base their prediction of the future GPA came in last. To wit: people still prefer having a fake interview than none at all.
So what should employers do? Cut out interviews entirely?
That’s not likely, but knowing how to conduct a proper job interview can help an employer potentially make a more informed decision.
Dana suggests the following points for job interviews:
Streamline the questions.
Instead of asking different interview questions to each of your job candidates, ask them all the same questions. That way, you can compare their answers to the same questions, to provide a better basis for comparison.
Use a skills-based interview.
Many employers already ask top-level candidates to perform a test, but this should be across the board. This can help more accurately predict job success, since you’ll be testing their skills in order to perform the basics of the job. No matter what their answers are to interview questions (and how you interpret them), a skills-based test shows if they can do the job—or not.
Skip the personal questions.
Sure, it’s a good idea to get to know your employee-to-be on a more personal level, particularly if you’re hiring for a remote job. But opinions can be swayed once interview talk becomes chatty, as you both discover that you share the same alma mater or that you both have a pug.
Job interviews are still a great way to vet job candidates if they are conducted the right way. Focusing on the person’s aptitude—and not their love of Game of Thrones—can help you determine if the candidate will be a fit for your company.
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