As a recruiter I abhorred the idea that an outstanding candidate for an important job was being judged by a person who wasn’t a very good interviewer. Sadly, after having debriefed over one thousand different interviewers, I estimate that about two-thirds fell short. And too often the assessments of those who were valid were overridden or discredited by those who weren’t.
You might recall that this was formerly known as the most important interview question of all time.
Having tracked the performance of thousands of senior professional staff and managers over the past 50 years it turns out it’s not hard to predict who will be successful. All you need to do is ask candidates to describe their major accomplishments most comparable to the key performance objectives (KPOs) of the open job. As long as you dig deep enough the factors shown below will pop out. Consistency is what matters, though, not one-time occurrences. This preview of the Sherlock Holmes deductive interview describes the probing needed to gather this information.
It turns out that anyone can be in the top 25% with the right job, the right company, and the right hiring manager. But this is a rare event despite having spent $400-500 billion in job postings and HR tech in the past 25 years in the hope of matching the perfect job with the perfect candidate.
The traditional interview process has been shown to be unreliable in predicting job performance, often due to bias, lack of training and a focus on surface-level characteristics. The Performance-based Interview (PBI) is a natural language approach that seeks to assess an individual’s competency, fit and motivation by asking them to describe their past performance in specific situations. Studies have shown that the PBI is a more accurate predictor of job performance than other interview methods, making it a valuable tool for organizations seeking to hire the best candidates. Moreover, the PBI can be used to assess candidates at all levels of experience, making it an ideal method for career development and succession planning.
The worst question about career goals is something like, “What’s your major career goal for the next five years?”
Many years ago I worked with LinkedIn on preparing a video highlighting the importance of developing a hiring strategy based on attracting the best rather than one designed to filter out the weak. It turns out that without the right talent strategy it’s not possible to hire more leaders on a consistent basis. Chance, hope, the latest technology or job boards won’t help. While the message in the video is still true today, most people will have some Catch-22 excuse why it won’t work.
As part of the launch of the 4th edition of Hire with Your Head (Wiley, September 2021) we’ll be hosting a number of interactive webcasts where we work through active search projects using the principles of Performance-based Hiring as a foundation. We’ll be demonstrating this idea at our next webcast with a focus on what recruiters need to do to connect with outstanding and diverse talent who are in high demand. The key to success here is to start with the right hiring strategy that maps to how these people look for new jobs.