27 February, 2008
Is the Interview a Moment of Truth?
Author: Maksim Ovsyannikov

If you were to ask any human resource executive — in any country, anywhere around the globe —what process they follow to recruit people for their organization, the word “interview” would appear in their response at least once.

For years, job interviews have been central to the entire recruiting process. Large organizations rely heavily on interviews as a means of understanding who their applicants are. Ultimately, interview feedback is almost the sole basis for making a hiring decision.

The interview is therefore a nailed down, precise way to pinpoint who is best suited to fill a job. Correct? Not so fast — as we are about to find out, the job interview is probably the least honest, least revealing, and definitely the least enlightening moment in the interview process for both the applicant and the employer.

Interviewing External Candidates is Increasingly Less Enlightening
It turns out that you are much better off reaching out to people you already know — those in your organization today, as well as those who are referred by existing employees. This is a highly successful way to attract talent and retain talent that you already have. The evidence is everywhere.

I recently came across a GQ Magazine article that discussed job interviews. I normally wouldn’t equate the validity of GQ as a source on this topic to that of any of the industry analysts, but it made all the sense.

On the cover, there was a typical depiction of what an interview would look like. A gray-haired man is sitting at a desk with a resume in his hand. Across the desk you see a young, probably just-out-of-college candidate, who looks composed, polished, and well-dressed.

The article quickly gets to the point — this experience is often the…
- least honest (“I met a lot of great people at Harvard”)
- least realistic (“I see you moving right up the ladder here!”)
- least revealing (“My biggest weakness? I work too hard”)
…conversation you’ll ever have at work.

The analyst community also recognized this fact with early publications, such as Forrester’s “Still Hiring — But Wanting the Human Touch” report which found that that interviewing outside candidates rarely produces real results for the organization. It is instead the “word of mouth” referrals and internal candidates that are most valuable.

There’s a good reason for this: you know these people better, and not because they told you about themselves. They have either already demonstrated what they can do within your organization or because someone else can testify to their capabilities. And while research from CareerBuilder finds that almost 50% of corporate recruiters plan to expand the numbers of full-time permanent employees this year alone, key players who recognize all the gloomy facts that surround interviewing outside candidates are expanding their process beyond the formal interview.

Hiring the Google Way
Have you ever considered Google as an employer of choice? If you have, you probably quickly found out that an interview is a small part of arriving at a mutual “yes.”

A recent CNET article reports that aptitude tests are increasingly valuable for Google. Recognizing that a handshake and a chat still have some meaning and value, Google is placing larger bets on specific questions like, “How many ways can you color an icosahedron with one of three colors on each face?” By the way, as a follow up they ask “What colors would you choose?”

Instead of asking an applicant to rate their creativity, smart employers are asking specific pointed questions and interpreting results themselves.

Understanding Candidate’s Experience
Consider “Jack” for a moment. Jack has been a project manager for 10 years. The question that I want you to consider specifically is how do we determine during an interview whether Jack has 10 years of experience or 1 year of experience relived 10 times? The truth is that Jack’s resume probably states that he has 11 years of experience and Jack himself would tell you that he definitely has at least 10, but how do we know the truth? Google seems to have found a meaningful approach. You can’t just “tell” – you have to “show.”

The conclusion is clear — interviewing internal talent or external applicants who arrive through a referral should be your plan A. And when going to plan B, serve yourself well — be as specific as possible and use a formal interview only as a small part of the process.

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Comment from Maria Vazquez on March 6, 2008

Conclusions are very well stated and will highly consider information during hiring process.

Comment from Drew Galloway, March 6, 2008

I totally disagree with your article. Just because someone is a referral from an internal source is not a guarantee that you know more about that person than an external candidate.

In your article you are basically saying that interviews are worthless because its possible someone can lie. Referrals can lie too, and those who make such referrals are often more interested in hiring their friends and building political clout than getting the best person for the job. Don't forget, Qualifications count too you know!

More often than not, internal referrals simply don't have all of the necessary skills and experience and usually require much more support or "coddling" to get up to speed on a new job. This is due to the fact that by limiting yourself to internal applicants or close referrals you are dramatically reducing the "gene pool" of qualified people.

Referrals can be good in the right situations, but a growing company looking to take its products and services to the next level often needs external talent to bring in fresh new ideas and expand. Sure, the interview process isn't perfect, but an experienced and savvy interviewer can see through the "lies" and get a solid view of the person's knowledge and capabilities. This takes extensive industry experience on the part of the interviewer.

You also don't seem to know the full purpose of an interview...it isn't just a series of questions and answers. Its how the interviewee communicates, how he/she carries themselves, how they react during stressful questioning. How well they communicate. In the interview you can get a feel for the person's attitudes/wants/needs/desires. Watching their body language can tell you a great deal as well. These things can ONLY be done in an interview, and a skilled HR person or hiring manager knows how to extract them.

Reply from Maksim Ovsyannikov

Drew, thanks for an insightful comment. Let me offer you my position on some of what you mention below. It seems like you propose that people who refer candidates for open positions are often interested in building political clouts and are less interested in hiring the right person for the job.

As I take a step back and think about this, I agree that it may sometimes be the case, but at the same time I wonder what would make these very same people, who make internal referrals, be guided towards a better or a more effective choice when interviewing external candidates?

Consider this for a moment - a hiring manager makes a referral for an open position on her team. If her goal is to build a political clout, she will accomplish the same goal by interviewing external candidates just as well. The process you choose here will not matter. What matters though is that her intentions are bad and a hiring process that she follows would rarely fix this. We are dealing with a bad manager and there are plenty of those. Instead of arguing that the organization would be better suited with her interviewing external candidates and not internal associates or referrals, I would argue that this very organization would be better suited with this manager not interviewing anyone at all.

I completely agree with your view on limiting the gene pool for the organization by focusing on internal candidates only and I also feel that an integrated approach is helpful. All the evidence, however, points to the fact that you do know your internal candidates more, and if you don't, well then you've got a set of issues that you better resolve fast. Those who are good will leave. They will probably end up with your competitor who will offer them better internal opportunities and will actually make an effort to learn more about them.

Mercer HR publishes regular studies that outline the state of "transformation" of human resources. According to Mercer, HR has failed in accomplishing their #1 task - learning about people who work for the organization. Instead, HR professionals focus on transaction processing - back end HRMS data entry. It would be interesting to see how this changes over the next few years. I would argue that the same organization that struggles with a hiring manager whose goal is to build a political clout will also struggle in finding a manager who would really attempt to understand someone's knowledge and capabilities - within or outside of the interview process.

IBM recently published a Global Human Capital Study. This insightful piece of research analyzed HR effectiveness in many areas. Close to 50% of executives who responded to IBM admitted that they were ineffective in modifying staffing based on changes in business conditions. If we were to propose that these would be the same folks who would be effective in observing attitudes/wants/needs/desires during an interview process, we would again have a problem. They want to be effective in doing this and they know they need to be, but close to half of them are not.

Today, technology is definitely seen as a major enabler to help HR transform. Saba's solution, for example, is a unified approach to accomplishing this. Start with Saba's Person Profile and collect meaningful data about your employees - stuff that is in addition to their social security numbers and benefit enrollments. Stay tuned and thanks again!

Comment from Adam Newland, April 25, 2008

I think you are right. The interview has been relied upon and I am sure statistics will show that it is no guarantee of a successful recruitment process. It also makes sense to look internally for candidates as you would hope that a company has less need to promote itself to an internal applicant than an external applicant. Having worked in the recruitment business for a number of years I believe the variables created when working with people require all manner of methods to contribute towards recruitment but none are conclusive by themselves. It all depends upon the nature of the organisation and the role to determine which tools are the most effective. I imagine it is difficult to manage talent using technology alone as the risk for an employee feeling like a number must be quite high. Applying technology to the recruitment process can have the same consequence however in situations where mass applications occurr technology becomes a good friend to the recruiter and adds great value. Now the interview has become less important at the early stages of the process. I believe my point is that when recruiting internally the interview still goes on but it is through annual reviews and on the job working that the "interview" is enacted to enable people to form their opinion. If technology is to be promoted in the recruitment process then supporting HR with mass external applications makes more sense to me.

Reply from Maksim Ovsyannikov

Adam, you make some very good points.  Managing talent using technology alone will never move an HR professional from transaction processing to business partnering.  The entire notion of the need to business partner depends on your ability to relate to the needs of the organization, which could not be done using technology alone. Technology simply becomes an enabler, and a quite important one, for you to truly navigate the organization, granted that you will have to exercise your people skills in step 2.