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.