Job interviews often lead to wrong
hiring decisions.
If you were to interview a baseball
player, you would not ask him how he holds the bat, and how far apart he keeps
his feet. Yet, these are the kind of questions people get asked on the
interviews - theoretical.
Problems:
1) There is almost no correlation
between theoretical questions and on the job performance.
2) Hiring managers are overly
confident that they can determine personality and cultural fit based based on a
30-60 mins interview. All they are really able to determine how well one acted
on their specific interview.
Even scientist-experts in such matters
as human behavior and cultural fitness require long observations and extensive
testing - and even they will tell you that they are often wrong.
Candidates who perform best with such
questions are simply able to give us answers we want to hear.
3) In technical professions managers
confuse communication skills with technical abilities and knowledge. That is,
some of the best developers I knew did not have good communication skills.
4) This is the age of an empowerment
and collaboration where individual performance becomes less important.
Individual performance still matters, but the collaboration does not get enough
focus on the interviews.
5) Many highly qualified people do
not perform well in a setting of an interview.
6) Many times I hired people who
could not answer any of my questions, and they all did very well. I saw a
potential in each one of them. See my related article - Hire people who FAIL
interviews.
I am not for abolishing interviews
altogether. I am for completely overhauling the process.
Suggestions:
1) For senior candidates reverse the
process, let them interview you and then produce a plan for the next 30-90-180
days - if they are being considered for a management position.
If they are a technical person - let
them produce a diagram. Let them point out to you problems and alternatives
with your set-up.
You should allow them to question you
over email as a homework. I do not believe in limiting interactions to short
periods of time during an interview. That's not how we work. Why should
interview be any different ?
2) In fact, do it for other
candidates as well - let them interview you, and see what kind of questions
they ask and how quickly they can ascertain how things work in your
organisation.
Focus your attention on the potential
of the candidate to come up to speed fast.
Some of that will be evident from the
questions they ask you and conclusions they draw. Some will be evident from the
resume - what was the speed with each they applied a newly acquired skill to a
real project.
3) Abolish a long sequence of short
interviews with lots of people interviewing a candidate.
Interviewing is not speed dating.
The expectation that your
interviewers can form a qualified opinion based on 30 mins interviews is very
flawed. Even a skill can not be verified that quickly - unless you are hiring
burger flippers.
But more importantly, you are looking
for a potential in a candidate - not just skills.
4) Give strong preference to
practical questions. Ask the candidate to write a little project plan, or a
piece of computer code, or make a sales call to one of your employees. Or
something like that:
5) Abolish cultural fit and
personality type questions. Unless of course we want to stack up our ranks with
people who give us answers we want to hear.
Cultural fit is important but -
firstly -it is impossible to determine based on a short interaction. Secondly,
even if it was possible to measure, it totally discounts the candidate's
ability to adopt to a new culture.
6) A little secret to my career
success. I always hired people who were smarter than me. In my case finding
such people was very easy.
Do not be afraid to hire
overqualified people either. You want the best.
7) Above all, please give everyone a
chance. Please, please do not set your selection criteria too narrow.
Neteller here: www.ituglobalfx.com.ng
Super Trading Strategies: Super Strategies
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