Start training managers to do a better job at hiring
Job interviews are without question the most adored and widely used employee selection tool. Unlike Bob Dylan’s 1964 song “The Times They Are A-Changin”, they are fundamental to the hiring process even today. Many hiring people cling to their much-beloved evaluation method – the traditional interview where they rely on off-the-cuff unstructured and casual questions, especially for low-level entry positions. Sometimes gut reactions triumph above all! Thus, hiring the right people becomes a hit-or-miss game.
Studies reveal that unstructured job interviews are unreliable, especially when today’s applicants prepare well just to get the job so much so, that there simply is very little correlation between the applicant’s performance in interviews and subsequent on-the-job performance, once selected. A bad hire can be accepted as the cost of doing business, but a steady stream of poor-quality employees is a clear symptom of a faulty hiring process.
I recall stepping up to my first management role as the Front Office Manager of a 4 - star resort hotel in the mid - 70’s, and of how exciting, challenging and daunting the role was. Thankfully, a three-year Hotel Management course which I had successfully just completed at the Ceylon Hotel School, accompanied by a steep on-the-job learning curve, helped me gradually overcome the avalanche of hurdles I faced each day.
One area though, which neither the hotel school nor the hotels where I worked at failed to provide me, was a formal training on conducting an interview. I wasn’t the only one I must admit, because several of the other department heads, I worked with, faced the same predicament.
Yes, we did have the support of experienced Personnel Managers who were confident (some bordering overconfidence), in their ability to judge people and believed they are always right. Sadly, I didn’t realise at that time that this overconfidence, some of which rubbed on to me, was a type of cognitive bias. Even though HR professionals tend to assume they are good judges of people, they are in fact subject to a variety of biases.
Let’s be honest. We are inclined to hire people like ourselves. We lean toward an applicant that think like us and we believe is a ‘good fit” - simply because that person behaves like us. We have a tendency to prefer people who are similar to us and may unconsciously favour, for example; candidates who studied at the same school we went to, have the same personality, mannerisms, interests, or backgrounds. It’s the 'I like you because I’m like you’ syndrome.
But before we get into that you might well ask “what are unstructured interviews?” First of all, unstructured interviews reflect the unfairness in hiring. What usually happens is that there is a lot of inconsistency in the questioning pattern. The same questions are hardly posed at every applicant for the same position – which unjustly leads to comparing apples to oranges. Part of the problem is created by the interviewers who find asking the same (structured) questions from every candidate boring and resort to shooting questions off-the-hip.
Other reasons why traditional unstructured interviews are extremely favoured by interviewers is that they are convenient to them. No need to prepare, test and finalise a set of questions. No need to record interviewees answers. All it requires is a ‘show of hands’ or ‘nods’ as to who gets selected and who doesn’t.
Imagine including a department head or manager who hasn’t conducted an interview in 12 months over a hiring process? Particularly, if that person or persons are not trained to ask the appropriate questions, is unprepared and delivers a poor candidate experience (remember in interviews the manager is the brand) or is unskilled, making decisions on gut instinct.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Motivational Speaker, Ex-Hotelier
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