Interviewing Going Rogue
Around
this time each year lots of lists get complied on events of the past year. A few weeks ago the Web 2.0 career transition site
Glassdoor.com created a list of the top 25 oddball interview questions. Of these
questions over half were measuring problem solving skills, while about a
quarter focused on assessing personality and the remaining quarter on
creativity.
Examples of these questions are:
While these questions are intriguing
and sometimes funny, they do point an unsettling trend in employment
interviewing. That is, moving away from asking questions that can be reliably evaluated
to more creative questions that send all sorts of mixed signals to job
candidates.
Most of the companies associated
with this list of questions have the reputation of hiring really smart people. I
get the impression that these overly smart interviewers are trying to out-smart
their smart candidates. It may be less important what the candidate’s response
actually means, than satisfying the interviewer’s need to just show a candidate
how smart he or she is.
Historically,
interviewing has been shown to be one of the least valid methods for pre-employment
selection. But it continues today to be
the most utilized assessment approach to hiring. It is rare that anyone hires sight unseen. It
is only human nature that we all need to validate our gut feelings about a candidate.
In
recent years interview predictive accuracy has improved considerably. This is
primarily due to the use of structured behavioral based interviewing techniques
(e.g., “Tell about a time when you…”) and the implementation of structured
approaches for scoring candidates answers.
All this helps clarify what constructs (e.g., personality characteristics,
ability, experience, organizational culture fit, etc.) the interview questions are
measuring as well as improving the consistency and accuracy of rating candidate
answers on some continuum (e.g., Excellent-Poor, High-Low).
Now
it seems like all this progress is being thrown out the window to focus on
asking clever questions without regard to the development of a way to reliably evaluate
answers.
Candidate Reactions
On
the flip side is what candidates think of these questions. Asking such oddball questions may create a negative
impression of the company. But if you’re
a highly desirable employer, with candidates lined up to work there regardless of
their feelings about the hiring process, this may not be a big concern.
On
the other hand, such questions do give candidates an insight into the culture
and style of managers and leaders.
Comments written by candidates on the Glassdoor.com blog site indicate
that the arrogance that comes through this sort of questioning continues after candidates
are hired.
The
blog comments strongly suggest that candidates are expecting straightforward
yet thought provoking questions. Those
couched in terms of the typical behavioral based question format appear to be
viewed more favorably than these odd ball questions.
Remedies
One
way to help eliminate the need to ask such questions is to move some of the assessment
process to formal tests. This does not
mean that a hiring manager should make up the test. Rather, use a test
developed by professionals.
Simply asking these oddball questions in a test format does not change the accuracy of the assessment. For example, I have seen a highly sought after employer employment test that asks candidates to write a haiku. I think we would all agree that this very much an atypical question. First it assumes that the candidate knows what a haiku is and how to construct one. Second, if there isn’t some sort of scoring guideline, how does one evaluate the answer? For this question to have any validity answers need to be linked to the specific construct it is measuring (e.g., creativity, verbal ability, risk taking).
Providing
hiring managers with interview training on what questions to ask and more
importantly, what questions not to ask continues to be a good solution. So does
just having a social two-way conversation.
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