Fake Encounters

In the words of Claudio Fernandez-Araoz, Senior Advisor, Egon Zehnder, ‘A typical job interview is a conversation between two liars.’ Most job interviews are fake encounters. The job seeker is trying to project certain aspects of her personality and capabilities while masking other aspects that may not be as much favorable to the situation. The interviewer presents the job in certain color and content to make it look attractive to the job seeker. Professional job seekers anticipate most of the typical interview questions and if one is not adept in anticipating these, there are professional sites which help one prepare for a job interview. Same way, experienced interviewers anticipate typical responses of candidates.

Even the best job interview carries a very low predictive validity. To appreciate this one needs to only look at the ever shortening average tenure of professional CEOs. It is logical to assume that most new CEOs are selected after several rounds of interviews by board members after the ‘research and espionage’ operations by a reputed executive search firm. Despite all that friendly encounters and fat search fees the success rate of senior appointees is much to be desired. Yet, most companies consider the job interview as the most critical and often the last hurdle before releasing a job offer.

Why is interview still the holy cow of selection process?

Nobody would want to kill an industry which thrives on this often very subjective process in the selection chain of events. I don’t know who invented this tool or when was it first used as a selection technique. It can safely be assumed that when the job seekers were mostly illiterate or semi-literate the easy way to get direct information regarding the candidate was probably a personal meeting. It is also safe to assume that in the pre-industrial era of gild system an able bodied youngster is taken as an apprentice or protégé and he is given a job based on successful learning on the machine or in the workshop. In this case a walk on the floor and a chat in the room were good last steps in the decision process.

What if we do away with job interviews altogether?

Based on all information provided by the candidate in her CV, data available in the social or public domain, the tests or questionnaires responded to by the candidate a company may offer a job to the candidate, skipping the fake encounters. Well this requires serious analysis of data by hiring managers and the recruitment managers.  My guess is that the end outcome may not be drastically different in most cases!

At the least, we will avoid many rounds of ‘hide and seek’ and reduce the recruitment cycle time. Experiment this no-interview selection for campus hires and then progressively try this for more and more senior profiles. Pick up more real life credentials from experienced candidates in multiple formats- audios, pictures and videos-match these with other information on the social networks, do serious reference checks and go ahead and take the decision.

Sounds far-fetched and utopian? Very much. Worth experimenting? May be.