Job Interviews Have Become Predictable

and Ineffective Here Are 10 Ways to

Change That
Dr. John Sullivan
March 28, 2017

Interviewing is a well-established component of hiring that you have probably

used for years without much change. But, now that the use of data and
technology has begun to permeate recruiting, every aspect of interviewing is
undergoing close examination and change. Its important for those responsible
for hiring to keep track of these developments because some of the new
alternative interview and assessment approaches are both powerful and exciting.

But, its also important to realize that as a result of applying data to the interview
process, we now have additional documentation revealing that the traditional
approach has many serious flaws that can significantly hurt your hiring results.
For example, Leadership IQ found that and astounding 46% of all new hires fail
within 18 months. Google research found that the unstructured interviews used
by most simply dont predict on-the-job performance. Heres what Google found:

Interviews are a terrible predictor of performance.

Many managers, recruiters, and HR staffers think they have a special ability to
sniff out talent. Theyre wrong Its a complete random mess We found a zero
relationship. (Laszlo Bock)

As more firms gather data on the effectiveness of interviews, recruiting leaders

are learning that there are an abundance of reasons why you should be skeptical
about your current interview practices.

For example, too many firms have practiced death by interview. This is where
firms require as many as a double-digit number of interviews. However, we now
know that an excessive number of interviews ruin the candidate experience. And
in addition, research at Google demonstrated that beyond four interviews, little
value is added. They also found that the commonly used brainteaser questions
that were made famous by Microsoft also provide no predictive value. Even the
most common types of questions, behavioral interview questions, have proven to
be problematic because these types of questions unfairly favor those that are
good at telling stories and those that shamelessly take credit for the work of
others.

Perhaps the strongest reason to change your current interview approach is the
growth of the Internet. It has made the days when you could surprise a candidate
with your interview questions distant history. With the Internet and social media,
candidates now know exactly what questions to expect because there are now
literally hundreds of sites that provide candidates with the most commonly asked
interview questions. As a result, if you are expecting genuine, original and
unpracticed answers to your typical interview questions, be prepared to be
disappointed.
As a start, its important to educate interviewers about the many problems
associated with the interview process. And also consider alternative assessment
approaches that cant be as easily gamed and also make sure that the interview
questions that you use accurately predict performance on the job, even if they
are known in advance.

The top 10 new and emerging interview modifications and

alternatives

If youre open to considering new candidate assessment approaches, the good

news is that there are some exciting variations and alternatives that you should
know about. These developments in the interview process include:

1. Shifting to a data-driven interview process because of its high

impact

There are three critical assessment components within the hiring process;
resume screening, interviews, and reference checking. Fortunately, with the
refinement of ATS software, the resume screening component of the hiring
process has become much more accurate and objective. The accuracy of the
third process component, reference checking, has also improved as a result of
the wide availability of social media/Internet candidate information and 360
reference checking. And that makes the middle assessment component,
interviewing, the most impactful but the least accurate of the three elements.

Interviews serve as an absolute gate or barrier. Meaning that if an otherwise

qualified candidate doesnt do well or if the process is inaccurate, you will never
know, because the candidate will be permanently eliminated from consideration.
The finality of the interview assessment has forced many large corporations to
shift away from an intuitive or gut-driven process and to adopt a data-driven
model that relies on data and predictive algorithms.
Google is the best example, but other firms are now using data to determine
critical interview components, including who should interview, whether training
helps, how many interviews are needed, which knockout factors should not be
used and what specific interview questions or assessment approaches
accurately predict on-the-job success.

Google even used data to discover that hiring managers almost universally make
poor candidate assessments, so they dont allow individual hiring managers to
make final hiring decisions. Instead, they use trained and experienced hiring
committees that have a much higher success rate (e.g. some HireVue data found
that hiring managers get as many as 80% of their assessments wrong).

I estimate that if youre not using a data-driven approach to interviewing and

assessment, you will increase your percentage of weak hires by up to 20%.

2. Video interviews provide many advantages

Because video interviews are becoming mainstream, its no longer necessary for
candidates to physically show up at your site in order to interview. Video
interviews offer many advantages, including the fact that they can be done
remotely on a mobile phone, making the always difficult scheduling of interviews
much easier.

Many firms are now routinely conducting Skype interviews and there are also
numerous vendors that can help you conduct live interview from anywhere
sessions that are video recorded. Because these interviews are recorded,
managers can review and re-review them many times and those that cant be at
the original session can also view them at any time.

And because video interviews are fully documented, there can be no doubt about
whether illegal questions were asked. Firms like Goldman Sachs and Zappos
have even encouraged candidates to submit their own self-designed videos.
Some firms are already using artificial intelligence to more thoroughly assess
candidate performance on these recorded interviews.

3. Measuring the quality of hire improves both interview and

hiring results

As the use of data becomes more prevalent in recruiting, more firms are
beginning to fully understand the critical need for measuring quality-of-hire.
Measuring the quality-of-hire (i.e. the on-the-job performance of new hires)
allows firms to determine how well interviews predict overall.

Comparing what top-performing hires have in common (and weak performers

dont have) can reveal many important things. Including, which skills and
competencies cant accurately be assessed during interviews and which specific
interview questions accurately predict future on-the-job performance. This
validation allows firms to reduce the number of interview questions that have no
predictive value and to focus on the ones that do for each job family.

4. In addition to interview questions, give them a real problem to

solve

Almost everyone agrees that standard interview questions dont accurately reflect
doing the job. And the problem becomes exacerbated when interviewers dont
know the right answers to the questions in advance. So a superior alternative is
to give the candidate a current problem from the job to solve.

Tech firms like Google and Tesla have led the way in providing candidates with
real problems to solve either during or separate from the interview. The
candidate is then assessed not just on their solution, but on which steps they
include or omit in their problem-solving process. Typical scenarios can include
outlining their learning action steps for their first month or finding an error or
problem in a current flawed process.
A growing number of tech firms and the startups are using whiteboard tests.
Which is where a candidate is asked to spontaneously solve a problem on a
whiteboard and they are then evaluated on both their solution and how well they
communicate. Other tech firms have offered Internet problem-solving contests in
order to identify, attract, and assess potential candidates. Although they are still
in development stages, amazingly realistic virtual reality assessment scenarios
are on the horizon.

5. Minimize unconscious bias in order to increase diversity hiring

The recent revelation of the tremendous economic value added by diversity

hiring has put an added focus on minimizing the biases that occur naturally
during interviews. For example, organizations that require candidate
performances (a superior approach) like orchestras have learned to put
candidates behind screens.

Other approaches that reduce biases because faces and voices cant be seen
include questionnaire interviews and text interviewing. Data has shown that the
assessment of fit is so subjective that it routinely eliminates otherwise qualified
diversity hires. Requiring interviewers to use, fill out, and turn in interview
scoring sheets can also help because it keeps interviewers exclusively focused
on the most critical job-related factors.

Offering unconscious bias training to interviewers has also proven to be effective

at firms like Google, Microsoft, Pfizer, and PwC.

6. Online skills, voice and personality assessments

There has been a growth in the number of available online technical skill tests
that firms can offer. Footlocker, for example, found that the addition of a single
skill test resulted in new hires that produced a double-digit increase in sales.
There are a wide array of tests that cover commonly needed skills like
programming, customer service, and accounting. There are even voice stress
assessment tests (VSAs) that can tell if a candidates voice will be engaging to
customers. However, it cannot yet accurately assess deception during interviews.

Personality tests are also available, but they cant improve your quality of hire
until you know for sure which personality traits accurately predict on-the-job
performance. Other organizations now require new hires to have technical
certifications as another way to assure competencies.

7. Artificial intelligence assessments are already here

Frms like HireVue, Facebook and IBM are already offering some combination of
AI technology, deep machine learning, and facial recognition software to assess
taped interviews. Technology allows the assessment to go beyond the actual
answers and to assess phrases, facial expressions and even subtle physical
movements that humans simply couldnt catch.

In the future, expect the use of technology to assess transcribed interviews in

order to determine if the information provided matches the answers provided by
previous high-quality hires.

8. Improving the candidate experience impacts current and future

hiring

Data has shown that a negative candidate experience can directly affect both
your future recruiting and product sales. And unfortunately, due to the growth of
social media, it is now much more common for poorly treated interviewees to
spread the word about their negative experience on social media.

In order to improve the candidate experience, firms like Blackberry and

Google have provided detailed information to candidates about the upcoming
interview process, so that candidates know what to expect. This reduces anxiety
and therefore it improves a candidates interview performance.

Google also offers candidate coaching to ensure that qualified candidates arent
eliminated as a result of inconsequential errors. Other firms are improving the
candidate experience by offering more convenient night/weekend and interviews
at professional conferences, fewer interviews, and fewer repeat questions.

Some firms are also offering speed interviews that allow a candidate to
interview with multiple managers of the firm within an hours time. Completing all
interviews on a single day improves the candidate experience, but since all top
candidates will likely be gone within 10 days, it may also improve your quality-of-
hire.

9. The sales components of interviews are becoming more

important

As the competition for talent continues to increase, it becomes harder and harder
to sell top prospects on accepting a job. As a result, the sales components of
interviews are now reaching the same level of importance as candidate skill
assessment. As a result, smart firms are consciously allocating a larger
percentage of interview time towards selling the candidate on the job in the
company.

In order to ensure that that time is not wasted, interviewers need to be better
trained on how to influence and sell finalists. Many healthcare institutions have
found that utilizing peer interviewing, where coworkers conduct most of the
interviews, provide many assessment and selling advantages.

10. Move beyond traditional skills and assess highly desirable

advanced skills
Many firms are realizing that in addition to the assessment of traditional skills,
there are some advanced skills that are highly desirable in new hires. As a result,
interviewers have begun to focus on identifying strategic thinkers, innovators,
mature adults and the self-motivated.

Google already assesses the career trajectory of candidates and their ability to
do this as well as the next higher job. Data from Google and others have
revealed that the most important skill across all jobs is rapid learning and
candidates with a growth mindset.

Dont be surprised when you encounter these advanced

approaches

In the future, there will continue to be many advances and developments in the
area of interviewing and assessment. For example, dont be surprised if firms
begin paying top candidates for interviews (the tech firms in New Zealand now
offer an all-expenses paid four-day trip to New Zealand just for agreeing to be
interviewed).

Also, expect firms to begin assessing the accuracy of individual interviewers by

showing them a series of both good and bad videotaped interviews in order to
uncover the accuracy of their assessments.

And even though it, unfortunately, isnt currently common, expect increasing legal
challenges to force recruiting leaders to statistically validate their overall
interview and assessment process, as well as each interview question. Finally,
realize that virtual reality simulations will eventually dominate assessment. These
simulations have already been implemented by U.S. Army and KPMG.

Final thoughts
With all of the recent advances in interviewing and assessment approaches and
technologies, its hard to argue against the premise that now is an opportune
time to re-examine every aspect of your current interview process. Closer re-
examination is also warranted because we now have an abundance of data that
clearly reveals, What works and What doesnt work in the interview process.

Re-examination is also necessary because candidate knowledge and candidate

preparation for interviews has reached such a level that what occurs in most
interviews can no longer be labeled as genuine. Of course, you can wait until the
latest assessment technologies become mainstream, but that will put your firm at
a competitive disadvantage. And unfortunately, it wont be sufficient just to give a
one-time look at current interviewing approaches, because I predict that new
alternatives will be continually developed over the next several years.

Authors Note: If you enjoyed this article, please connect with or follow Dr.
Sullivan on LinkedIn

Dr. John Sullivan is an internationally-known HR thought leader from the Silicon

Valley who specializes in providing bold and high business impact; strategic
Talent Management solutions to large corporations.