To Get the Best, Avoid Hiring by Instinct

It is only natural, when you hire, to give preference to candidates who mirror your personality, interests, and style. But this can be a big mistake for the long-term health of your organization.

Too many clones in one company stamp out the value of diversity—the ability to solve problems and innovate—that thrives on a variety of approaches and skill sets. Interviewers need to base their hiring decisions on a job profile that clearly states the ideal technical and behavioral qualifications for the position. A multi-faceted team is far more productive than a team of mirror images.

By the same token, a job seeker should not accept a position because they “like” the interviewer. Potential candidates should assess the requirements for the job, as well as the team and company culture, to be sure they are a good fit.

The goal of a hire is to bring aboard the right talent for the right job that will succeed in your unique culture. Avoid hiring (or accepting) a job by instinct; apply objective measures to the process.

Do not Get Fooled by Candidate Potential

Strange as it may seem, interviewers seem to be more impressed with what candidates could do instead of what they have done.

Based on an experiment run by Zakary Tormala and Jayson Jia of Stanford and Michael Norton of Harvard Business School research participants declared that a rookie basketball player with a given set of projected performance stats would deserve a salary of $5.25 million after five years as a professional, but a five-year pro who had actually achieved such stats would deserve just $4.26 million.

Assuming the validity of this experiment, hiring companies should ensure that their interviewing skills training programs teach interviewers to emphasize and understand past achievements based upon a specific set of pre-determined competencies without getting overly swayed by unknown (yet appealing) potential.

To keep a balanced approach:

•         Utilize open-ended questions
•         Understand how they personally performed in the past
•         Manage the flow of the interview to stick with past accomplishments
•         Evaluate and compare specific past situations
•         Probe for limitations and concerns

Successful Interviewers Can Dissect Good Stories

An effective way to highlight prior job experience and desirable personal qualities in an interview is by telling stories - similar to a good movie or play.  We don’t mean stories that are not true…but narratives that focus attention on what makes an excellent candidate for the job.

Influential candidates are excellent at thinking up stories that illustrate how they have solved problems in the past and how they would directly contribute to the successful future of the interviewer’s organization. They arm themselves with relevant anecdotes that showcase good qualities—collaboration, integrity, an ethic of hard work—whatever would be most desirable in the new setting. And when it comes to failures, they are ready with a narrative that conveys an honest admission of where they went wrong and what they learned from the experience.

Stories can have a significant impact; they are much more powerful and memorable than a simple, response.

So your job as the interviewer is to use interviewing skills training best practices to truly uncover the desired motivational, intellectual and interpersonal competencies that you require for them to succeed in your unique culture for the position.  Do not get fooled by good tales.