Many of us have read the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, where he postulates that chance and “gut feel” may play a more significant role in our lives than we imagine. Another older and more rigorously researched book entitled “Fooled by Randomness” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb also takes a similar position.
These books make me question whether interviews are as valid as we think or needed anymore.
I remember one recruiter who worked with me. He was convinced that our time interviewing and screening candidates for a specific job was a waste of time. He insisted that any candidate who had met a minimum number of essential criteria could potentially perform that job equally well. The only remaining need was to determine how well the candidate fit in with the hiring manager and, to a lesser degree, with the organization. He felt that it would be more cost-effective to make a lot of hires quickly and then let their on-the-job performance determine who should be kept and who should not. His idea was to ask the candidate questions, have a short interview or two, and make a decision.
In the simplest terms, he felt it was better to let randomness play a large role in the selection and that it was better to have a loose hiring practice than a much tighter and more thorough upfront screening process.
At the time, I was appalled at the thought. I felt recruiters were responsible for ensuring quality and ensuring that the very best were being presented to hiring managers. I also thought that with tests and behavioral interviews, we could surely choose the best people. However, data suggests that our selection processes are not very effective as a large number of hires leave within the first year anyway.
So, now I am not so sure.
When I think back to the early 20th century, mainly before World War II, most jobs were filled relatively quickly. There were no employees who had the specific title of recruiter. There were clerks who made sure paperwork was completed correctly, but a manager typically found and hired who he wanted. Some jobs were filled without any interviews. Henry Ford was famous for randomly choosing men to work on his assembly line from those waiting at the gates for a job. Higher-level jobs were filled after a brief interview with a hiring manager who decided based on a candidate’s skill but, more importantly, on soft factors such as potential, eagerness, appearance, family background, and physical characteristics. Workers had little protection from arbitrary firing, and it was easy to get rid of poor performers.
There were many things wrong with this approach, but the most obvious was that it blatantly discriminated against anyone who did not fit the stereotype of the hiring manager. The rise of the Scientific Management system developed by Fredrick Taylor and the growing power of unions, along with legislation, drove the growth of the HR and recruiting professions.
But the old system did have one virtue – it was simple and was built on a belief that potential, attitude, and performance were what really counted. Gut feeling often took precedence over more objective factors. Many engineers, doctors, and lawyers were trained in what amounts to an apprentice system until World War II. Formal skills training only gradually gained acceptance after the war when thousands of GIs went to school on the GI Bill.
As we moved into the 1950s and 1960s, these hiring practices were augmented by adding more requirements like minimum levels of education, years of experience, or test scores before a person would be considered for a position. College enrollments soared, and parents pressured their children to pursue a college education. This was seen as fairer and served as a screen to eliminate the hundreds of people potentially applying for the same job.
The problem with this approach is that the defined requirements were rarely connected to actual performance. They only seemed fairer because they eliminated or reduced screening out because of race or sex and were defensible. However, over the past 40 years, we have learned that people who qualify for jobs based on their education or experience alone are not necessarily good performers. We now know that simply selecting people by generic measures like education and experience doesn’t work very well and discriminates against those with real skills who do not have the required credentials. These methods have also not reduced racial and sex discrimination.
Changing Work
Jobs and the skills required are changing rapidly. Managers and recruiters are confused about what skills are needed as new technologies and markets challenge traditional ones. It is very difficult to use traditional techniques or measures or even to figure out the precise competencies and skills needed for a job.
So, what do we do?
Our normal interview process may now be obsolete, as software tools can assess and rank candidates faster than we can and with less bias. Interviews then become a way to meet and add a personal touch to the candidate’s experience but are not a way to screen for skills or fit.
Emerging A.I.-based technologies are redefining and even reducing the type and depth of skills needed for many professionals, including programmers, engineers, designers, and many other professions. Tools can augment and replace traditional skills but they also create the need for new ones.
Three rules seem to be forming around matching and selection.
Rule #1: Use technology to assess candidates quickly for basic skills and potential.
Many tools match skills to the work and can assess a skill’s depth by analyzing the candidate’s past work and background. Personality assessments and culture fit tools can help determine how well the candidate fits a manager’s personality and the organization’s culture. Don’t waste time on lengthy interviews and tricky questions. They don’t work. It may be that we need to consider hiring more generalists rather than deeply skilled specialists whose skills may quickly become obsolete.
Rule #2: Focus on Internal Placement and Development
As new jobs and duties emerge, we are already struggling to define the skills needed. And even when we can, they change rapidly. Hiring people with agile learning skills and an open-minded attitude often trumps expertise. Managers should have already learned that they cannot find candidates with 100% of what they want and that development is a core function of the firm.
Many companies have used development as a strategic edge. IBM, for example, along with many other firms, put in place a development-centered recruiting approach in the 1960s because there were few people with the needed skills. When you have people with skills and others who don’t, you win. Finding and developing current employees with some, but perhaps not all, of the skills needed for a job will also become more common.
Rule #3: Have robust performance management systems in place.
A good performance management system, based on whether people achieve realistic goals and meet the requirements of their position, is essential to success. By hiring people using broad competency descriptions, as I am advocating, you may hire some poor performers. And that’s okay. What is not okay is ignoring that and allowing them to stay in their job without more development.
The hallmark of the best 21st-century organizations will be their approach to defining and selecting the people they need. Traditional measures of education, experience, attitude, and cultural fit may play a small part, but what will be significantly different is a quick, flexible approach to hiring for potential and developing robust development and training programs. This will result in a workforce that can fit into less well-defined jobs and create new ones as needed.
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