Face to Face Interviews - Apparently we don't pick the best people and meeting them in person does not help our odds of selection. Fast Company article.

I was reading the latest issue of Fast Company on the plane on Saturday and found this article very interesting. It is called, It May be Wiser to Hire People Without Meeting Them. Hmmm. The gist of this piece is that, while we think that meeting a person in person will help us collect more information from which we can be MORE objective and make a better selection, this may not be the case. The article offers some fascinating research that showed that meeting someone in person did not improve selection in terms of job fit and success. Here is a snippet:

Here's the reality: Interviews are less predictive of job performance than work samples, job-knowledge tests, and peer ratings of past job performance. Even a simple intelligence test is dramatically more useful.

What do you think. Check out the article and then come back here and make your argument. How ought this thinking change how we hire (if it should at all)?

Is that prized in-person chemistry important? Or more important than other notions of job fit?

I would like to see better culture fit assessments, too.

Your thoughts?

Comments

[MikeSchwiebert]

Very interesting, Lisa. In my experience, good interviews are few and far between. This is becoming a lost art or a misunderstood one, to say the least.
I agree in the value of work samples and various tests, but couldn't it be an either or?
I took a DISC profile for my present position, and although it may show how I might fit on the team (my natural proclivities), I have considered it a personal challenge to work outside of those natural tendencies when appropriate. How the prospective employee uses (or doesn't) that information is as important as the information itself.
I think it is important to use all of the tools available in choosing good candidates. As this article spotlights how interviews are many times the least effective of those tools, that is spot on, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

[lisa haneberg]

Mike: I agree that I don't see the interview going the way of the dinosaurs. But it is interesting to think about - why our judgment often fails us and the various tools we can use to up the odds of the best possible decisions.

[Italian Guy]

Some people are also better at doing interviews then the would be job that they are going for.

[Guy Harris]

Lisa,

Very interesting observations. Given the skill that many hiring managers have at interviewing, I can see the problem. Very few people have any formal training as interviewers, and even fewer have a well-defined interview process based on objective criteria.

That being said, I think that interviews still have their place. I am an engineer by training and perspective. So, I'm pretty well stuck on validated, verified, objective, measured standards. Still, I think that getting a "read" on a person is better than relying solely on test results to determine things like "fit." (I'm not even sure that "fit" is an easily defined term.)

It does make sense to me that some sort of practical work skills related test should be part of the interview process.

I would think a balance of both skills testing and in person assessment would give skilled interviewers a more rounded view of the person before they make the hiring decision.

Thanks for starting this conversation. I find all the perspectives interesting.

[lisa haneberg]

Yes, it is interesting that our "gut" is telling us that interviews have their place (perhaps it ends up being more for us and less to improve the decision?). And for many companies, it is all they use so there is no choice. Most companies don't use assessments or other means.

I would love to see a study assess the effectiveness of over the phone versus in-person interviews.

That said, I have know candidates that have interviewed much better than they work AND many who have interviewed poorly but have been a wonderful employee. I think we place too much emphasis on interviewing skills for some jobs.

[Michele]

Lisa - this is such an interesting subject! We just conducted a Myers-Briggs analysis of my current team - and quite a few suspicions were validated! How helpful it would be to have this type of understanding of a prospective colleague - BEFORE joining the team! Another interesting tidbit is the fact that when we are "taught" interviewing skills, so much emphasis is placed on pitfalls ... the halo effect, etc. Obviously, it is known that we have a natural human weakness to bring emotions into the equation and perhaps give those emotions more weight than is deserved. However, I think we all agree that some type of human connection is extremely important.

I personally think the whole "hiring" process is one that is antiquated, and should be re-engineered. We have so many more avenues available to us now - social networking sites (both personal and professional), blogs, etc. Interviewing is now as much for the interviewee as the interviewer. And in this age of making decisions with data instead of gut feel, I think we should be able to come up with a better solution that would better serve us all.

[lisa haneberg]

Michele - I agree with you that the hiring process could use a reinvention!

On the MBTI = yes it would be great to know this info during the hiring process, although the MBTI is not approved for use with hiring (there are some assessments that have met the APA guidelines for preemployment test, which is what is needed, because they assess both the person and the job requirements). When I was with Black & Decker, we used a behavioral assessment for hiring and it was very helpful. What's your MBTI? I am an INTP.