Evidence-Based Interviewing: What Actually Works?
Employee selection is critical to organizational success. Each new employee that is chosen will either push an organization closer to its vision, or move the organization farther from it. Further, when the right employees are chosen up front, organizations can spend significantly less money and resources training, motivating, and retaining them.
Structured interviews ensure that questions are job-relevant, there is consistency from candidate to candidate, and a scoring guide is used to evaluate interviewees.
Organizations vary widely in the way they select and hire employees. Some of the tools that organizations use to assess candidates include resume screenings, personality assessments, cognitive ability tests, or simulations. Although there is quite a bit of variability in selection practices across organizations, one common thread among most is that they include interviews as part of the process for screening candidates.
Hiring teams rely heavily on the information gathered during interviews to determine which candidates have the necessary skills to do the job well and are a good fit for the role and organization. Because interviews are an important component of many organizations’ hiring processes, management researchers have conducted a great deal of research to determine how they work best. That is, which interview components and characteristics are proven to help organizations predict which candidates will make the best employees?
In this post, I’ll provide a practical summary of this research - of what works and what doesn’t for getting the right employees in the door. Then, read my next post for a guide to developing and conducting evidence-based interviews.
What doesn’t work: Unstructured interviews
The majority of interviews that are being conducted in organizations today fall in the category of unstructured interviews. And unfortunately, they aren’t actually helping select better employees. Decades of management research show that most unstructured interviews are little better than chance for picking the best employee for the job. So, you could literally come to the same quality of a selection decision by flipping a coin. Unstructured interviews are problematic because they fail to provide the information that is needed to predict candidates’ future job performance. This is because they typically:
Include many questions that are not directly related to the job
Allow for different questions to be asked from candidate to candidate
Result in disagreements among interviewers because they are not aligned on what a poor vs. great response is
A great deal of management research shows that each of these problems can be solved by introducing structure, relevancy, and consistency to the interview process – enter structured interviews.
What works: Structured interviews
Decades of management research shows that using a structured interview approach predicts future job performance. It reliably helps managers and hiring teams pick employees who are higher performers and a better fit in their role and organization. Unfortunately, structured interviews aren’t used in most organizations. Instead, organizations continue to rely on unstructured interviews. And as a result, they hire many employees who aren’t very good at their jobs.
Structured interviews are much better at identifying a great hire because they ensure relevancy and consistency across the interview process. Although they do require a bit more development up front, great employee selection is critical to the success of both corporate and non-profit organizations. Structured interviews are proven to help hire better employees, making them well worth the time investment. Structured interviews have three main aspects that make them effective selection tools.
Structured interviews revolve around questions that are directly related to the job and its requirements. Far too many interviews ask questions that are only minimally related to the job (What is your greatest personal accomplishment? What do you know about the organization?). Many hiring teams fall into the trap of asking questions in a round-about way in an attempt to understand candidates’ true abilities and motivation; but unfortunately, these indirect questions just aren’t effective for understanding how someone will do on the job. Worthwhile interview questions are those that are directly related to the role. For example, if problem solving skills are important in the role you might ask candidates, “Tell me about a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem.” Or if you find that persuasiveness is needed, “Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.”
The same questions are asked across all candidates. During the majority of unstructured interviews, different candidates are asked different questions. This takes away the ability to make objective judgments between candidates because they weren't assessed on the same things. Because the questions are pre-determined, structured interviews ensure that the same information is gathered from all candidates. This is additionally beneficial because it protects the organization legally as it prevents interviewers from asking questions that could be considered discriminatory.
Finally, structured interviews involve the development and use of an answer scoring guide to drive alignment between interviewers on what is considered to be a poor vs. good vs. exceptional response to the interview questions. These scoring guides are typically done on a numerical scale with anchors. Then, interviewers use the scale to rate candidates’ responses to each question. The scoring guide ensures that all interviewers rate all candidates in a consistent manner, which increases the likelihood of interview panels coming to the same conclusion when selecting an employee.
Conclusion
Decades of management research show that structured interviews are an effective selection practice for hiring better employees. Yet, most organizations continue to utilize ineffective unstructured techniques. Structured interviews ensure that questions are job-relevant, there is consistency from candidate to candidate, and a scoring guide is used to evaluate interviewees. As a result, structured interviews are proven to help hiring teams identify the best candidate for the job.
If you're looking to bring an evidence-based approach to the selection process in your organization, I recommend starting with employee interviews. It’s a great place to start because interviews are something you are probably already doing.
Next time, I’ll provide a practical guide to conducting structured interviews. In the meantime, if you want to talk about how evidence-based selection practices can be used in your organization, feel free to reach out and schedule a complimentary discovery session!
References
Latham, G. P. (2011). Becoming the evidence-based manager: Making the science of management work for you. Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Macan, T. (2009). The employment interview: A review of current studies and directions for future research, Human Resource Management Review, 19, 203-218.