Most hiring managers are better at evaluating whether or not candidates can do a job than they are at determining whether or not candidates will do a job. That opens the door for a lot of people who really shouldn’t pass through. Résumés almost exclusively focus on what people have done, and offer little insight into how they did what they did. And résumés don’t even come close to telling us how the candidate perceived what he or she did. Interviews, with their similar emphasis on accomplishments in previous and current jobs, aren’t much more helpful, and managers tend to learn little from them about a candidate’s motivation, preferences and perceptions.
Interviews Are Ineffective Hiring Tools
This helps us understand why interviews – all types of interviews – are so ineffective at predicting job performance and why companies continue to make so many hiring mistakes. I’m still searching for a valid study that proves interviews can predict anything other than a candidate’s ability to interview well! That doesn’t mean we should stop interviewing – interviews, limited as they are, add some value to the hiring process. But we should recognize that interviews only illuminate what a person can do and shed little if any light on if and how a person will do what he or she can do.
Not CAN, but WILL Do
The key takeaway here is that much turnover occurs with people who can do a job, yet for various reasons are not motivated to do the job and won’t stay in the job! Since determining who can’t do a job (rejection) is easier and different from the more difficult task of determining who can (selection), it is essential to augment the interviewing process with more predictive tools that more accurately measure the critical will do factor.
In my next post, we’ll discuss motivation and how that plays a factor in selecting candidates who not only can do the job but who will remain motivated to stay in it.
__________________________________________________________________________For more than forty years, Frank Gump has been helping corporations become more productive and profitable by helping management teams identify and hire top performers and manage them most effectively. Developed and refined through extensive experience in more than 1200 organizations in the United States, Canada, England, and Australia, ADGI’s Organizational Management System (OMS) is a finely calibrated, technologically advanced decision-making process offering the potential for enormous payback. Contact ADGI for more insight and connect with Frank on LinkedIn. Follow ADGI on Twitter @ADGIGroup. Like ADGI on Facebook and follow us on Google+.