Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership

Unstructured interviews don’t predict very well, so add a little structure in 5 key areas. 

It’s a fact that interviews fail to select the best candidate most of the time. 91% of the factors that would identify the top candidate are not even covered during interviews.

Five Easy To Implement, No Cost Ways To Make Your Interviews Better

Despite their many flaws, fortunately, five proven, no-cost, and easy-to-implement actions can dramatically improve your standard interviews. These additions can instantly make your interviews measurably more effective in picking the top candidate, so if you’re willing to add a few proven innovative elements to your interviews. This article covers what you need to do. Note that the five easy additions are listed in the order that they occur during the interview process (the most impactful addition is #4).

1) Frame The Interview As A Professional Conversation

In many cases, interviews don’t identify the best candidate.  This is partly because many candidates underperform due to their anxiety around the interview. Fortunately, the interviewer can reduce this anxiety.

The first step is to change the candidate’s perception of an interview by describing it to the candidate as a non-confrontational conversation between two professionals (i.e., a professional conversation) held in an informal setting where the interviewer and the interviewee sit side-by-side.

During the second step, you can further limit this performance, lowering anxiety by being transparent. In this case, transparency means you provide the candidate with a preview of what’s to come during the interview. This involves telling them which specific areas the company needs additional information and insights into the candidate.

A third step in reducing anxiety would be to help them remain positive throughout the interview by periodically acknowledging whenever the candidate says something that impresses the interviewer.

You can find many more details on how to hold a professional conversation here.

2) Encourage The Candidate By Adding A Positive Feedback Minute

Candidate research has shown that many interviewees suffer from what is known as the “imposter syndrome,” which is where the candidate, for no real reason, feels down. They mentally wonder whether they are even worthy of being interviewed. This assumption will unnecessarily degrade their interview performance.

Fortunately, you can help them shake this feeling and even boost the candidate’s ego by adding a “positive feedback minute” to the very beginning of your interview. During that minute, the interviewer purposely highlights several positive things the company has already discovered about this candidate to energize them and shift them to a positive attitude.

You can learn more details about this positive feedback minute here. 

3) Document Your Interview Process For Continuous Improvement

Unfortunately, because most interviews are so unstructured, the lead interviewer can’t really tell if their interviews are actually identifying the best candidate.

The first step in continuous improvement is requiring each interviewer to use a prepared score sheet that covers only the valid selection criteria for this job. This is because the total score from each individual interviewer is documented. You can later determine which interviewers and individual interview questions are the most accurate in identifying which candidate would become a top-performing new hire. If you also video record each interview with a smartphone (or video conferencing), this video documentation will also allow you to counter any claims of unfairness. Additionally, those who couldn’t make the initial interview can watch that video later.

You can learn more details about how to document your interviews better here.

4) Focus On Asking “How Will You Act Here” Situational Questions

This “ask situational questions” step is by far the most impactful of the five additions, so don’t scrimp on it. This addition is necessary because today, the expected standard interview questions (and answers) are easy to find on the Internet.

When you ask these common questions, they primarily generate rehearsed answers from the candidate, so the answers add little value. So change the type of interview questions you’re asking to situational questions that reveal “how you will act” in this job (if you get it). They differ significantly from behavioral interview questions because instead of asking how you acted in the past at a different company.

The candidate is instead asked to reveal how they will act in real job situations that they will likely face in this job and under our values and culture. These types of situational questions are superior because they are almost impossible to rehearse and answer unless you really know your stuff.

The first category of situational questions usually includes how the candidate will handle important tasks. For example, “Please walk us through the steps you will take during your first week to build relationships with your coworkers ?”

A second category of questions covers problems they will face in this new job. For example, “As our customer service manager, please walk us through the steps you will take to resolve a major service complaint from a significant customer?” 

There is also a third category that you can use. In the cases where you want to see how the candidate envisions the future of their job and our industry, you can ask forecasting questions like “Can you highlight the top three major changes that you anticipate will occur in your customer service manager over the next two years?”

You can learn more details about these “how will you act” situational questions here.

5) Selling The Candidate Must Become A Major Component Of Your Interviews

The primary purpose of a job interview should be to assess each candidate’s capabilities accurately. However, during a tight job market, where top candidates have multiple job choices.

It is essential that a significant portion of the available time now be spent selling the candidate. An effective selling component will help prevent the candidate from dropping out prematurely during your long hiring process. Also, effective selling will increase the chances that the candidate will accept your offer (if they get one).

The first key step of the selling component should occur before a candidate’s first interview. This step requires that you ask the candidate to reveal the criteria that must be met before they accept their next job (i.e., their job acceptance criteria). Much of the selling component before and during the interview should focus on showing the candidate specifically how this job meets most of their criteria.

During finalist interviews, the candidate should be asked to list any of their major concerns or issues that must be resolved before they would accept a job offer from you. You should do your best to clear up those issues before the end of the interview day. Adding the selling features should ensure that the top candidate will enthusiastically accept your offer (if it comes).

You can learn more about how to effectively sell candidates during interviews here.

Research by Google revealed that unstructured interviews are literally…  no better than a coin flip!

Links To Articles Covering Some Additional Interview Improvement Steps

I have previously written about the many additional approaches that can be used to improve the effectiveness of interviews. You can access an article on reducing the number of required interviews by clicking here. You can access an article about improving diversity interview results by clicking here. To learn how premature comments can hurt interview results, click here. You can learn how to improve interview scheduling by clicking here. You can learn what’s wrong with most behavioral interview questions by clicking here. Finally, you can learn more about the top 50 most common problems that occur with interviews by clicking here.

If you only do one thing – ask a handful of your finalist candidates several situational questions. Then, begin using these answers as the best indicators of their capabilities.

Final Thoughts

During this new era where everything in recruiting must become data-driven, your interview process cannot be allowed to be an exception. Especially given the fact that traditional interviews only identify the best candidate less than 10% of the time. In my research and practice, I have found that almost every interview will improve dramatically if you adopt the five innovative approaches presented here. The time to act is now. Your current interview process is likely a prime reason why you are not able to hire many top candidates effectively. 
Note for the reader – This is the latest in Dr. Sullivan’s 25+ continuous years of weekly talent articles. You can access his thousands of articles here.