Interviewing
The Job Interview Process Is Dysfunctional
The goal of the job interview process is to end up with a fully engaged employee who contributes significantly to the company’s operations and who is still doing so two years later. If you’ve interviewed and hired people, you know that the job interview process is far from perfect.
Even worse than falling short of this goal, the job interview process also often results in unintended consequences such as hiring an employee who is now causing issues that didn’t exist before. Examples might include poor service to customers, lost sales opportunities, disrupting teamwork and, over time, causing other employees to leave the company because of their poor behavior.
Four Factors
There are four factors that contribute to the job interview process becoming dysfunctional:
- Employers are not clear about what they’re looking for in a job candidate - When multiple owners have multiple opinions on what their looking for, the process is doomed from the start. Or, when the owner says “I’ll know it when I see it,” the owner will settle for the best candidate available instead of a candidate that meets the pre-defined criteria.
- Employers are eager to fill the position - The search goes on longer than expected and employers get nervous about an empty sales territory or too much overtime for office staff covering an empty position. The temptation is to fill the position quickly.
- The job candidate wants the job, but is not a fit - Job candidates may be unemployed and need a job, might be looking for a job before they get fired or they might simply be unhappy in their current jobs for whatever reason. When a job candidate’s strengths don’t match up with the requirements of the position, the process is doomed. Candidates come incredibly well prepared for interviews nowadays and determining whether they are a fit for the position is difficult at best.
- Using a placement firm doesn’t guarantee success - Now matter how much integrity the firm has and no matter their track record, the relationship with a search firm sets up a potentially dysfunctional relationship. Because of the structure of the relationship, their goal is not your goal. Their goal is to get one of their candidates hired so they can generate revenue for their firm. In this kind of a relationship, they are not sitting on your side of the table. And, ultimately, that’s not in your best interest.
Strategies For Delivering Organizational Results
Again, the goal of a job search is to end up with a fully engaged employee contributing significantly to the company’s operations and still doing so 2 years later. What can you do to improve your employee selection results? Two things.
One, pay careful attention to the four contributing factors listed above and do what you can to put processes in place to avoid them. Do this for every job search you conduct, even front line and clerical employees. We all know of those offices where the goal is not to set off the moody receptionist or anger the overbearing clerical person. Where dysfunction exists, productivity and customer service suffer.
And two, if you’re going to spend money on the search process, consider using the services of a behaviorial interviewing expert. This person sits on your side of the table and has years of experience in overcoming these four obstacles in what should otherwise be a process that helps you grow a successful business.
To your success!
For more helpful tips as you negotiate the employee selection process, see our blog articles on interviewing.
Predicting Job Performance
Which is most predictive of on the job performance when considering job applicants or developing a current employee: experience, knowledge, attitude, talent, skills, strengths, weaknesses, length of service or number of jobs?
According to The Gallup Organization’s research, led by Marcus Buckingham and presented in Now Discover Your Strenghts, talent is the most predictive of on the job performance.
There are many compelling reasons revealed in the research, but one of them sums it up best. When we work in an area where we have raw talent/gifting, a chemical reaction actually takes place that rewards us for using these talents. It’s as if the body is saying, “yeah, you’re good at that - do that again.”
Use these insights to improve your hiring, employee performance and organizational results.
Is There Value in Behavioral Interviewing?
Would you come and teach our organization behavioral interviewing? I get that question a lot. The answer is YES and NO.
YES, as a consultant who has completed over 1,600 interviews, I can teach business leaders in organizations how to do behavioral interviews. I’ve done this many times in many organizations. A few clients have also sat in on my behavioral interviews to glean behavioral interviewing techniques. One client even videotaped a behavioral interview so they could refer to it repeatedly.
On the other hand, NO, behavioral interviewing cannot be taught. Using behavioral interviewing techniques is easier said than done. Job candidates are so well prepared for interviews today that many answers to questions sound behavioral when they are not behavioral at all. In addition, in my experience, until a business leader has done hundreds of behavioral interviews, he or she will not be comfortable enough in the interview situation to focus on getting the most beneficial information out of the interview. This beneficial information includes the distinguishing features of a true behavioral answer, the non-verbal clues displayed by the candidate and the candidate’s answers to the questions. In a behavioral interview, what the candidate does not say is as important as what the candidate does say.
In spite of these challenges, developing behavioral interviewing as a competitive advantage for your organization will allow your organization to become more effective at understanding the true capabilities of job candidates than your competitors. This more effective business practice will, over time, improve the quality of your employee selection process and result in better business results.
Let’s look more closely at a few of the techniques used in behavioral interviewing.
The premise of behavioral interviewing is that past performance in specific situations is the best predictor of performance in similar future situations. It sounds simple. The real challenge is that, nowadays, applicants will provide rehearsed answers to almost any question you throw at them. However, applicants cannot fake answers to multiple questions, based on the competencies you select, regarding exactly how they handled specific situations in their previous experience. Their answers to these behavioral questions are excellent predictors of how they will handle situations in your organization.
In terms of behavioral questions, the most common technique is to start any question with the words “Tell me about a time when…..” This question format is asking for a specific instance when the candidate displayed some skill. The first challenge is defining what skills, or competencies, are most important to predicting successful job performance.
To thoroughly assess a candidate’s skills, we should probably ask each candidate over a hundred questions. If we tracked and analyzed that data over time, it would tell us that some of those questions are more predictive of successful job performance than others. In order to avoid asking hundreds of questions, one of the key steps in behavioral interviewing is defining the skills that are most predictive of successful job performance. When this is done effectively, we can then focus on only those questions that are most critical to predicting future behavior.
Another critical skill in behavioral interviewing, in my experience, is listening for a behavioral answer to your behavioral question. When asked to describe a time when the candidate led a successful project, the candidate might say:
“I always do three things to make projects successful. First, I set expectations up front on the time frames for tasks to be completed. Second, I require weekly updates on any tasks that are behind schedule. Finally, I dig in and work with
the team leaders to address those items that are behind schedule in order to get them back on track.”
Wow! That impressive and detailed answer would indicate that this candidate has substantial experience managing successful projects. This candidate would be highly desirable to most organizations with a need for a project manager. However, the answer is not a behavioral answer that indicates what the candidate actually did in multiple specific situations. With additional behavioral questions, we could quickly determine whether these skills were real or whether this candidate’s answer was a rehearsed interview answer.
Behavioral interviewing is challenging, but, if done well and consistently, there is a substantial financial payoff. Hewitt Associates, a Chicago area based consulting firm, estimates that the cost of white-collar employee turnover is 150% of the employee’s total compensation. For an employee with $50,000 in total compensation, the cost to the company is $75,000 (150% of $50,000). In order to avoid arguing over Hewitt’s data, let’s say the cost is half of that. That means that each employee who leaves takes approximately $35,000 with him or her. By investing in improving the quality of the employee selection process, organizations have received a substantial return on their investment by reducing their employee turnover.
In summary, experience is the key. If you look for an experienced behavioral interviewing consultant to assist your organization in improving your employee selection process, you will see improved results quickly. The key is to look for someone with substantial experience who understands the nuances of getting the most out of the behavioral interviewing process. If you choose to implement behavioral interviewing on your own, know that, with diligence, skills will improve with experience and that the payoff will come over time.
