Most organizations could improve their hiring practices. Interviews are frequently poorly done and psychometric assessments are not used to help predict success.
Companies and law firms frequently hire me to conduct a pre-hire assessment of final candidates. Final candidates are given online personality and ability assessments. I then meet with each candidate and
conduct an extensive semi-structured performance-based interview asking competency-based questions. Clients receive comprehensive Selection and Development Reports.
Could your hiring practices be improved?
Most managers find employee recruitment and hiring to be frustrating and time consuming. With this negative attitude, they hire impulsively, basing their decisions on the feelings they experience in interviews with candidates. However, a study conducted by John Hunter of Michigan State indicated that the typical employment interview is only 57 percent effective in predicting subsequent success. This is only 7 percent better than flipping a coin!
In a survey by Lou Adler, (Hiring with Your Head, 2002), 95 percent of managers said they had made bad hiring decisions, 95 percent indicated that hiring is number one or two in importance, and 95 percent admitted to not liking the hiring process.
As important as hiring talented people is, not enough time or energy is being allocated to establish a reliable process. With a 40 to 50 percent error rate, hiring processes are not much better than random. No other processes in organizations are permitted to be random – companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to reengineer flawed processes that have only a 5 to 10 percent error rate.
A major problem revolves around the interview itself. This is a random process that doesn’t work very well, and is one of the reasons most managers find the whole effort frustrating. Emotions, biases, chemistry and stereotypes play too big a role. True knowledge of the performance requirements of the job usually is weak. There is an over-reliance on the interaction between the candidate and the interviewer, and too little on the candidate’s ability and motivation to do the job.
A candidate is often hired because of his or her ability to interview well; presentation is more important than substance. The candidate is judged on first impressions of his or her personality, social confidence, assertiveness, appearance, extroversion, and verbal skills. Instead, the candidate needs to be assessed for initiative, team skills, achieving objectives, technical competence, management and organizational skills, intellect, leadership and emotional intelligence.
It is hard work to counteract the natural tendency to judge people based on first impressions, personality and a few select traits. Overcoming this problem can eliminate 50 percent of all hiring errors.
Lack of real job knowledge is another major part of hiring mistakes. It is necessary to know the required competencies of the position, based on the performance requirements of the job.
When an internal person is promoted, the predictability of his or her performance is very high – 80 to 90 percent. Performance predictors for an external hire are only 55 to 70 percent accurate. Predictions about the success rate of internal hires are more accurate because the person’s past performance is known: attitude, work habits, intelligence, leadership and team skills, ability to learn, management style, potential, commitment, and other intangibles such as ability to handle stress.
But with external hires, there is often an over-emphasis on skills, academic record, personality and first impressions. There is insufficient analysis of what they have actually accomplished with their skills.
How effective are your hiring practices?
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