What's the "AHA!" REPORT all about?

This series of newsletters contains AHA! information to help people and organizations hire the best employees, make the best promotion decisions, retain the most qualified people, maintain the widest applicant pool, follow best practices, and (if you are subject to US law) remain aware of EEOC hot-spots.

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The latest overnight sensation to bathe in the glow of media celebrity is a rather unlikely character: a lemur-like creature named “Ida,” who came to light as a 47-million-year-old fossil. Besides her remarkable state of preservation and cute name, she also has opposable thumbs, which makes her a possible “missing link” to the first primates.

The technical details turn out to be a little less compelling, a lot more complex, and in fact, debatable. What does all this have to do with recruiting, I hear you ask? To me, the hype surrounding Ida is a reminder that evolution is actually a messy and complicated business. This is as true of organizations as it is of primates: It’s hard to evolve, and sometimes it’s even harder to know if your supposed evolution represents a real improvement.

How to Leave the Interviewing Stone Age
Once upon a time, there were no human resources departments. Applicants were interviewed by managers and hired or fired on the spot. For most employees, work was often simple and labor-intensive. Not much changed as the need for workers grew, except that management created a new department to process paperwork and administer benefits. As you can imagine, new employee skills were only tested on the job. Eventually, the “paperwork and benefits” department was assigned the tasks of placing job ads and pre-screening applicants.

In this new geologic era, most applicants were still interviewed by managers and hired or fired on the spot. For most employees, work was still simple and labor-intensive. New employees’ skills were only tested on the job. Throughout this period, interviewers’ primary objective was to screen out blatantly unqualified candidates (i.e., people they either disliked or who lacked opposable thumbs) and forward the most promising primates to the hiring managers. Without any special training or education, their interview questions sounded something like this: “Tell me about yourself. Why do you want this job? Do you have any relatives who work here?”

As you can imagine, new employee skills were still only tested on the job. Time went by, and interviewers became more confident, often to the point of believing they were highly-evolved hominids called psychologists. The personnel department even creatively renamed itself “human resources.” Questions changed slightly and became something like this: “What color do you prefer? What is your greatest strength? If you could be a different animal, which would it be, and why?” As you can imagine, new employee skills were only tested on the job. Nothing much changed -- except that interviewers sounded sillier, and applicants read advice on how to fake them well and get the job.

No one should be surprised to learn that research shows interviews are most predictive of future job performance only when they meet three criteria:

1.) The interviewer works from a competency-based document that outlines the skills necessary for job success or failure. This is not a job description and it is not a job evaluation band. It is a list of measurable competencies based primarily on interviews with successful job holders.

2.) Interviewers have learned to phrase questions in such a way that answers are difficult to fake and examples are job-related. They have learned that past job behavior -- not necessarily job performance -- is a very good predictor of future performance. (Just like intelligence, dexterity, and complex social behavior are good predictors of success as an aspiring hominid.)

3.) Finally, each interview question must have a scoring guide consisting of desirable and undesirable answers. An interview is not a conversation to get to know someone. It is a verbal test. It has something to measure (required job skills), something to ask (structured questions), and a standardized answer key (right and wrong answers).

Structured interviews are usually called “behavioral” because they attempt to discover the specific behaviors associated with job performance. The assumptions, as mentioned before, are 1) if (for example) learning difficult information is an important competency for the future job; and 2) if the applicant says he or she learned in the last job; and 3) if the applicant can demonstrate that learning was successful; then 4) the interviewer can assume the applicant would probably be successful in the new position.

Here’s what every evolved hiring organization should remember about interviews:

• Interviews are tests and subject to all the conditions of a good test.
• Job descriptions and job evaluations seldom provide enough information on which to base an interview.
• Interviewing is not a learn-as-you-earn activity.
• If skills are not accurately evaluated pre-hire, then the job will evaluate them post-hire.
• Few people have the skills necessary to do a competent interview.

If you forget the above, remember that poor interviewing leads to increased turnover, lower individual employee performance, and higher training expenses. Not to mention a workplace full of screeching monkeys.