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Triangulation: There’s more to hiring than interviewing

You can’t just hire people based on the interview. Oh you already knew that? You don’t need to keep reading? Okay. If that is the case, answer me this; how many times have you been hired based on your interview alone? How many managers have you hired for, who weren’t interested in the reference?

That may have been a gotcha, it may not have been. But- you may have a process that requires you to do more than just interview, but when you strip back the decision-making process (not the hiring process) the interview is often all that is considered, and often it’s as simple as a gut instinct.

Interviews are full of opportunities for bias

There’s a lot written about interviews, both academic and popular, online and in textbooks, that boil down to ‘interviews have a plethora of opportunities for bias’. I’m not going to repeat or dispute these, but take it as read that they are correct- it’s very easy to show favour to small, intangible, and irrelevant factors for or against a candidate. To give a case study- think of the last role you hired for, and think of the archetype candidate for that role- age, ethnicity, gender, personality. Now think of the biases that someone the complete opposite would have against them.

The switch

But more important than bias, interviews are limited because they are a limited photo of someone who knows their picture is being taken. Most people only have a genuine attention span of 1 – 1 ½ hours, after which they likely to moved from ‘having an open-mind’ to ‘making a decision’.

Next interview, look for the switch. The switch is where the interviewer shifts from listening, to talking. Their voice takes a definitive tone, their body language closes up, their mind has made a decision; yes or no. From here either they are either just being polite, or getting to know them personally. I’ve been interviewed myself and seen the switch happen (both positive and negative) before I even got a real chance to speak.

What is the relevance of the switch? It’s a marker of when information ceases to be relevant. Prior, the decision maker is listening, after, they are not. It demonstrates how limited interviews are, how short the window is for information gathering.

Interviews are like travel shows

There is more to selecting than interviewing. Interviews are essentially mandatory (could you envisage employing someone without meeting them, at least virtually?) but you need to think beyond these. An interview is like watching a travel show; the travel guide visits a city for 10 minutes, provides a heavily edited, abridged highlights reel of everything good. But employment is for the long term, and we need to live with these people, not just visit. Would you migrate to Barcelona based a sunny day highlight package of its alfresco restaurants? What about the difficult, gritty everyday questions like traffic?

Triangulation

When considering your options, find some alternative sources of information. Why? More data is more information. The analogy here is triangulation; if you want to know where something is, the best method is to approach it from different angles. Multiple assessment methods provide different perspectives and angles from which the candidate is appraised.

What methods?

There are many different ways to assess candidates, some good, some okay, some no more valid than looking up their star sign. The validity of different methods is a topic for another day, but here are some highlights.

- Most important are references. For some reason, the most important dataset available to us is the least regarded these days. But how well someone has done in the past for someone who had to manage them is absolute gold, although it can be a bit hard to get.

- Work testing. Everyone can talk a good talk, but seeing if they can walk to walk is a fantastic way of assessing them. If you can ‘get them on the tools’ in any way, do this.

- Cognitive testing. Personally, I’m not a fan of personality testing, but I am a fan of cognitive testing. How smart they are is a big predictor of success in also every role.

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The limitations of interviews