The “interview” is the most widely used mechanism to assess and evaluate job candidates for prospective employment. I think it is safe to say that the goal of doing some kind of evaluation process is to find the best candidate who has the desired technical qualifications (i.e. education + experience), best “fits” the values and objectives of the organization and will be a top performer. Does using the traditional interview provide a valid method to meet the above mentioned goal? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! How can a closed-door meeting that normally takes place inside of 4 walls, sometimes without windows, natural light or fresh air, with a panel of interviewers either staring down without any facial expressions at you or madly scribbling notes in their notebooks be an accurate way of determining whether or not the candidate is the best candidate for the job? Do employees spend their time at work in similar situations in front of panels responding to typically mundane questions that have nothing to do with organizational results? I don’t think so! Isn’t the idea to pare down prospective candidates to the one candidate that will be the best performer on-the-job? Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that the intent of the traditional interview is to do just that but it has been proven time and time again through research that the interview is an extremely poor way of predicting on-the-job performance and success. So, why do the majority of organizations today still use the traditional interview as the primary means to evaluate candidates? The answer… it’s easy to administer and interviewers naturally feel most comfortable seeing the candidate face-to-face. There is an intangible “thing” that people like when they get to meet a person face-to-face, a feeling of comfort. Facial expressions, a “connection”, candidness and so forth are all things that people feel comfortable with and somehow link to a successful interview. In fact, many organizations have policies that require a face-to-face interview to take place before a formal offer is even made to the successful candidate.
Okay, so the traditional interview is still widely used, and in my opinion will continue to be widely used, at least in my lifetime! There are a significant number of organizations today that are developing and integrating more creative and meaningful evaluation methods to find suitable job candidates such as personality assessments (see www.clearfit.com), employee referral programs, on-the-job trials, case studies and so forth. But for the majority, the traditional interview is the ONLY method used. As a job seeker, instead of trying to change the world, let’s just deal with this fact and do what we can to “play the game”. People typically don’t interview well, and in fact, many people who are not great interviewers would be excellent performers on the job. So, I guess the moral of the story here is to do everything you possibly can to be a great interviewer so that you can succeed in the interview process….. simple as that!
