Stereotyping Interviews, Questioning HR

Recently I'm given this article despite I'm a HR Professional with HR knowledge at Masters level as if those really trained in HR don't know how to do their job. Sometimes you cannot see HR's effect is not because HR is doing it wrong but rather HR is not given the power and chance to get the company to do it right. When you think HR is 'common sense' that anyone senior can talk about HR like an expert, you already subconsciously is discrediting HR and not giving them any chance to get things right. This article is not entirely wrong but people who read it may have some misunderstanding about interviews and HR practices. I'll address every points mentioned in this article.



ARE JOB INTERVIEWS UNTRUSTWORTHY?

When many people talk about 'interviews', they are actually talking about 'unstructured interviews' or 'situational interviews' instead of 'interviews' generally. And people reading this article may stereotype interviews as 'unstructured' and 'situational'. Unstructured interviews has a lower validity rating in predicting performance being at only 0.31 (Anderson and Shackleton, 1993). In unstructured interviews, candidates can be asked any question that is customised according to situation. When it is customised, you cannot compare person A to person B fairly. People may assume customisation can lead to higher validity but given the tendency of humans having psychological errors and biases, objectivity likely not to be there. The solution is structured interviews where there is a standard set of questions for all. Validity is higher at 0.62 (Anderson and Shackleton, 1993). The article mentioned about theoretical/hypothetical questions. Those well trained in HR knows very well these questions have low validity in predicting future performance (Barclay, 2001). You can fake answers easily with hypothetical questions. What interviewers should do is to do a behavioural interview in which candidates are asked about a past experience that they have exercised this or that knowledge/skills. It is hard to fake it because you can drill deeper and if they are found not able to answer smoothly, there is a high chance of them lying. You can use behavioural interviews to test many things. Whether one has team work, technical skills and many things.


LOOKING FOR POTENTIAL WITHIN A CANDIDATE TOO 

Of course you look for potential too but you think a 1 hour interview can tell you a lot about potential? You need to work with that person after hiring then you will know better.

Why do you think there is performance management system in place? Cause you cannot guarantee the best candidates during recruitment! Even during the midst of employment, you are still 'interviewing' candidates and screening them with appraisals. Performance Management Systems have a sorting effect in which poor performers will automatically resign. If well implemented with biases minimised, it is actually a very powerful system.

ARE COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS NOT IMPORTANT FOR TECHNICAL PEOPLE?

If you work in a team, communications skills will be important. Period.

Jobs are specialised and you need to coordinate. In order to coordinate, you need to explain what you do and get understood. While it is less important for some roles, it is still important and should be considered too.


PROBLEMS WITH SOME OF THE SUGGESTIONS

1) Asking Candidates to Interview You Instead? 

Asking senior candidates to produce a plan for next 30-90-180 days especially in IT area may not be realistic. There is a severe lack of IT Professionals in the market. Many are likely to have overworked. Why would they have the time to produce such a plan? You will screen off many good candidates by that alone. I already have candidates (though few) that chose not to turn up for my interviews because we have too many tests which they don't find it worth their time.

Asking them to interview you instead may not get a high acceptance of the method as this is not widely used and can backfire. If they need to invest so much time to develop a plan and think about interview questions, I doubt they will want to apply for your jobs to begin with unless they are so desperate in wanting to join you. If you are Google, I think you can do it but an average company can't. For average company, people just mass send their generic CVs. You can't expect them to spend hours for every single application to develop various plans right?

If interviews are so flawed, asking candidates to interview you when they are not well trained in interviews will only make it more flawed.

2) Stop Speed Dating Interviews?

While interviews are not speed dating, Managers don't have all the time in the world to take their own sweet time. Company operations need to run and not stop or slow down because of wanting to get the best candidate. 

Real world decision makers are satisficers. You do want to get a good enough person by sacrificing losing the best because by getting the best, you may sacrifice far more. Imagine it is so slow (because there can always be a better one than earlier interviewed) that all existing staff already overworked and start to resign and snowball. Getting the best individual while losing an army is pure stupidity (the author never suggest this but some people kept emphasising getting the best like as if at all cost). 

3) Asking Practical Questions

Practical tests are no longer uncommon.

Ability tests have validity of about 0.54 while work sample tests have validity of about 0.55 (Anderson and Shackleton, 1993).

Are they superior than interviews? Yes to unstructured interviews at validity of 0.31 but not to structured interviews at 0.62 (Anderson and Shackleton, 1993).

But of course, no harm having tests! It can complement the structured interviews and as a whole can increase the validity of predicting performance.


4) Should Personality/Cultural Fit Questions Not Be Asked?

Personality has a low validity in predicting performance. The highest as found in HR research is Big Five Personality Test which is only a validity of 0.20 (Barrick, M. R., Mitchell, T. R., & Stewart, G. L., 2003)! Why? Because like the article said, people can adapt to situation. However, if it is a service job when it is long hours of dealing with customers, those that are high introverts will feel very stress as they are forced not to be themselves for too long. Generally, personality can only predict how a person would behave when alone, without social pressure to conform. 

 However, there are some traits in which personality does predict a person's behaviour. Low self-monitors cannot monitor the environment well to know when and how to adapt. There are also people that choose not to adapt even if they can (those less open). These can be tested with relevant questions. So I don't think such questions should be dropped as long as asked correctly.

Again, these can be tested using a behavioural interview. Furthermore, personality test can be used to complement other better selection methods. However, if too many methods used, it will scare people off.

5) Should You Not Be Afraid to Hire Overqualified People?

The issue is not about over-qualification. Of course you want the best but the best in which you can use. If you cannot manage the expectations, they will leave and what best candidate do you have to utilise if they join and leave after few months? What returns can you get from this best person as compare to one who is good enough that stays and you don't have to retrain all over again in months to get him/her to perform? Overqualified people tends to expect more. Unless you are the market leader in HR practices and pay, you have to fear hiring overqualified people as you may not be able to keep them.

Of course you can say 'but not all overqualified people have high expectations'. True, but you as a job seeker have to give confidence to employers that despite your over-qualification, your expectations are not hard to manage. If you can stay in your previous company for long despite a pay that is not high, if you show it in your CV/application, you can give confidence to the employers.


CONCLUSION

Many people are quick to point fingers at HR and telling HR what they should do because they cannot get what they want (e.g. job) and blame it on HR.

As I have shown above, people don't even know what is an 'interview'. They stereotype all interviews as 'unstructured' and 'situational' and discredit all interviews blindly and ignorantly think they are in a better position to 'advise'.

They also assume HR practices suck because of HR. In reality, that's not true. How many CHRO do you see in C-Suites within companies? How many people have told you "HR is common sense, no need a Masters". Got people even surprised that there's PhD in HR. If really common sense, you won't have many HR-related problems. It is because HR is not given the power and people assuming it is 'common sense' do not think they need HR's advice. How then do you expect good HR practices to appear in a company? 

I always see reports of HR analytics going around but hey... HR academics already know all of them and these are widely known by people well trained in HR. They don't appear because HR's voice gets silenced by those in power who may argue "these are common sense" but yet don't practise them or consciously go against their subconscious biases to do what's right. Things might change when HR starts to acquire more analytics capabilities to show their worth better and show evidence to get buy-in.

Interviews like many HR practices are well backed by scientific research but they cannot get their full potential because you have non-HR people using them in whatever way they want because they think it is 'common sense'. And it is also these people that question HR if HR disagrees with their 'common sense'. They exaggerate their seniority in other areas as justified enough to be an HR expert. We can listen but if becomes too pushy, then don't expect us to take it well.

I don't like to do what is inefficient and ineffective. I prefer to do things backed by science.

Are Foreigners Really Snatching Our Jobs?

Someone from my Army whatsapp group shared this post from The Independent Singapore somehow suggesting Singaporeans are being discriminated where jobs go to foreigners easily.

Being in HR, I know this message is not true and refuted it. First of all, having lived in UK and having fellow Singaporeans trying to find jobs in UK, I understand how difficult it is to find a job in UK as a foreigner, even more than in Singapore. So it is easier for foreigners to find a job in Singapore but whether is it 'easy' is subjective. It depends on what job.


MISREPRESENTATION 1: EASY TO FIND JOB FOR FOREIGNERS IN SINGAPORE

The person who was featured in the article is a makeup artist! Whether her job is still makeup artist, I do not know. Assuming it is still her profession, do majority Singaporeans want to be a makeup artist? If not, of course it is easy to find a makeup artist job! This is the makeup artist's youtube channel. This is her blog. This is likely her old facebook page (note Vintage Vision, the blog is mentioned). And this is likely her LinkedIn Page. Freelance Makeup Artist/Hairstylist is her background when in UK.

The other person featured was Joshua Robinson who didn't have a degree yet get a job in Singapore. Firstly, who tells you that you need a degree to get a job in Singapore? You think the foreign construction workers have degree? The need for a degree is usually a criteria for Employment Pass as mentioned in MOM website here. S Pass for Diploma at a minimum. He is a mixed martial arts instructor as this news article mentioned here. Do you think such a job need a degree?!


MISREPRESENTATION 2: WIDESPREAD DISCRIMINATION AGAINST LOCALS

Quoting 50 companies violating foreign manpower policy seems like widespread if you just look at the nominal amount of companies BUT how many companies are there in Singapore?

In reference to Singapore Statistics report, page 12, in 2015 alone, there are almost 65k business entities in Singapore. 50 is like 0.08% of all business entities only! Even with 250 in the watchlist, that is like 0.4%?

If anyone is arguing "hey... but it is increasing in numbers". My reply? "Of course! At early stage of discovery of anything, you will definitely find more following initial discovery! Do you expect the numbers to decrease?" But just because numbers are increasing doesn't mean it is widespread. After 250, it may go up more or go down depending on the stage of discovery. Until full exploration, it is hard to judge if it is widespread. We should look at proportion of total business entities and not on nominal amount alone and blow it up influencing irrational policies that put good behaving companies at disadvantage.

There are companies struggling because of quota being stricter. Look at 4:20 of the video above. If companies cannot perform optimally, they will be forced to leave. Singaporeans will then lose jobs instead of saving jobs for them! This irrationality and exaggeration doesn't help Singapore! This video has many valid arguments. If free, have a look at it.


IT IS GETTING HARDER FOR FOREIGNERS TO GET A JOB IN SINGAPORE

There is a trend of EP being downgraded to S Pass even when EP criteria has been met. It happened to some people I know and the recruitment agency I worked with also saw such trend. So it is false to say Government is not doing anything. In fact, I felt it may have been overdone.


MISREPRESENTATION 3: INCREASING NUMBERS OF FOREIGNERS = EVIDENCE OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST LOCALS

A counter-argument against me was raised that foreign manpower increases over the years as can be seen here and that local population growth rate has been decreasing as reflected here. Sounds legit argument? No.

This argument is overly simplistic. How can you say this is an evidence without looking at the growth of jobs, the trends for locals, the supply of locals and etc? That data isn't even apple vs. apple to begin with. You are comparing a working age foreigner vs. entire Singapore local population instead of working age locals.

In view of working age locals, local manpower also increased over the years. Have a look at the growth in resident manpower supply here. This doesn't mean they are employed of course. The unemployed rate for local residence has been quite stable at around 2.87 since 2010 as reflected in Resident Unemployment Rate and Number data. In translating that data into trends, the growth employment for residents (as based on the data on 'Number of Persons In The Labour Force Aged Fifteen Years and Over' is:

2012: 2,060,000 out of 2,119,600 employed (97.2% employment rate, 2.8% unemployment rate)
2013: 2,078,913 out of 2,138,800 employed (97.2% employment rate, 2.8% unemployment rate)
2014: 2,126,200 out of 2,185,200 employed (97.3% employment rate, 2.7% unemployment rate)
2015: 2,169,796 out of 2,232,300 employed (97.2% employment rate, 2.8% unemployment rate)
2016: 2,189,872 out of 2,257,600 employed (97.0% employment rate, 3.0% unemployment rate) - preliminary data only, not finalised

Even Singaporean/PR nominal amount of people employed also increased over the years. So does more foreign manpower mean Singaporeans/PR get discriminated? No. This is a positive correlation. Instead, it may instead suggest that job growth for locals is dependent of foreign manpower!


MISREPRESENTATION 4: FOREIGNERS COMPETING JOBS WITH LOCALS

Is it true that foreigners are competing jobs for locals?

2016 data:

EP: 189,600 (13.5%) VS. 760,400 residents with degree (33.7%)
S Pass: 179,400 (12.8%) VS. 438,700 residents with Diploma & Professional Qualification (19.4%)
Other lower tier Work Visa: 1,035,700 (85%) VS. 1,058,400 residents with highest qualification below a diploma (46.9%)

Data for Foreign Manpower is from here. Data for residents can be found here under 'Resident Labour Force by Highest Qualification Attained and Sex'.

This isn't entirely an apple vs. apple comparison because the latter data on resident is on labour force which says little of whether or not they are employed. However, with only 3.0% unemployment rate, it has little influence on the big difference from the current proportion stated here.

You can see from this data that locals aren't really discriminated against. Bulk of quality jobs (S Pass & above) are still given to locals. Those that really suffered are the low-skilled workforce which is recognised by Government like cleaners. Things like workfare are being done to help them. More can be done but to say nothing has been done is an unfair statement.


MISREPRESENTATION 5: GOVERNMENT STATISTICS CANNOT BE TRUSTED

Total foreign manpower for 2016 is 1,404,700. Someone argued that data is inconsistent citing, total foreigners in Singapore population is 1.67 million as reflected here. Are all foreigners working in Singapore? Foreign students are non-existent is it (which consists of 66,800 persons)? Dependants of Citizens/PRs/Work Pass Holders who are foreigners living in Singapore without working also non-existent is it (which consists 267,200 persons)? These groups consists of 20% (which is 334,000 persons). 1.67 million less 334,000 is 1,336,000 which is more or less tallied (it differs likely due to difference in period of statistical data collection within the year and some statistical error which is quite minimal).

Breakdown can be found here in this news.


STOP EXAGGERATION

There are definitely exceptions of discrimination against locals BUT please do not blow things out of proportion misleading public and influencing them to harm themselves by doing irrational things. When public use their election votes to threaten government to react to tighten foreign manpower even more, it can make companies not able to perform optimally, discourages others to invest in Singapore and existing ones to stay. The supply of manpower is very important. Singapore's labour market is becoming too tight (i.e. hard to hire people quick enough). To reduce dependence on foreigners, we need to use more technology. But the embrace of technology by locals is kind of slow. Local cohort of IT programmes in local Universities as I was told by locals in those programmes are like less than 20%. If we overdo the control of foreigners (the interim solution until we catch up on technological adoption), we may force employers to leave Singapore. When they leave, so will jobs be created for Singaporeans/PR. Will this make anyone happier?

Many of these anti-Government articles are heavily biased, written by ignorant Singaporeans who are not well-trained in research and data analysis. These created lots of 'noises' making valid arguments against policies being 'drowned' in the noises that cannot be easily be discovered.

In order for Singapore to maintain its competitiveness, it is important to be innovative. Innovativeness has to do with diversity too. Foreigners need to learn how to integrate with us but this takes time and we also need to stop being irrational xenophobic behaviour and embrace this diversity. When we are welcoming, foreigners will be more willing to interact with us and only so can ideas be exchanged to add innovation.