Are you in rather a hurry? If so, you can dash straight to the training course at this link.
If you’ve been hunting for a job lately, you may have been subjected to the arcane, outdated and sometimes dehumanizing process known as being ‘interviewed’.
I thought we might all resolve to stop asking people to “Walk me through your CV” or similar horrors, in 2017.
The traditional user, known as the ‘interviewer’, will usually apply guesswork, various personal bias and harness a mysterious power commonly known only as ‘gut feel’ to judge and predict your ability to perform well at a task in the future.
This is probably one of the least data-driven processes involving important life and business decisions that exists.
Would you get betrothed based on a subjective first impression, gained over an hour at dinner or lunch? Of course not. So why do many companies and institutions apply the same thinking to the way they select talent?
A little knowledge is dangerous
Interviews are generally bad. Even when people get trained to interview (most don’t, even at C-level) they are usually terrible at it. There’s even scientific evidence that even a well structured interview is only marginally better than an unstructured one, at predicting future performance, certainly weaker than things like job-relevant simulations.
“Hundreds of studies have revealed the profound limitations of the traditional interview”. [Prof John Moore, Berkeley]
Worse yet, those who have made a few accurate guesses and lucky hires in the past, may even feel they have a gift for picking winners. Just like in the gamblers fallacy, you might as well be flipping a coin.
In an effort to improve the experience innocent people have in interviews, maybe even handing them a little dignity back, I’ve been giving some thought to what questions we should all probably stop asking.
Now you can go and uncover the 6 interview questions you should immediately stop asking at this link below. Good luck in the quiz. You need to score 80% or more to pass.