How do you think?
The problem with interview questions
Once upon a time, if you went for a job interview, you had a fairly clear idea about the questions you’d be asked – your education, previous experience, reasons for wanting that particular role.
Not so now. The “unstructured” job interview is becoming increasingly popular. In this format, there are no standardised, predetermined questions, rather it’s more like an open-ended, free-flowing conversation led by the interviewer, who decides what to ask as the interview progresses. Employers say they prefer this approach to the structured interview because they believe they get to know candidates better. Although that may be true, there’s no evidence that unstructured interviews predict job potential.
Reviewing the relevant literature, Jason Dana and colleagues at Yale conclude that unstructured interviews have little predictive validity. Why, then, do employers still use them?
To answer this question, they created a series of experiments in which participants were asked to predict fellow students’ current grade point averages (GPAS). Some participants were given the students’ previous GPAS (“valid information”) only, while others were given GPAS and also shown transcripts from unstructured interviews with the students. As a twist, some of those who’d had an unstructured interview were told to answer truthfully, while others were instructed to answer randomly.
When asked to predict GPAS, participants were less accurate when they had access to the interviews as well as previous GPAS than when they were offered GPAS only – and this was true of students who answered truthfully as well as those who had given random answers.
When questioned later, participants admitted they relied more on interview data than on GPAS – even when they noticed that some students’ answers seemed to make little sense – so convinced were they that interviews contain important predictive information.
Even more distressing for job candidates is a newer version of the unstructured interview, the “brainteaser”, in which candidates are asked impossible questions (How many windows are there in London? How many taxis are there in New York?). The idea is that such questions gauge reasoning skills – but, as with unstructured interviews, there’s no evidence they identify the best candidates.
What, then, are the most reliable ways to make a wise choice? According to Dana, structured interviews
– those were all applicants are asked the same questions – predict suitable candidates better than unstructured interviews. Even better, however, is to rely on practical exercises that test job-related skills.
In other words, keep it simple and straightforward. That way, companies will hire more appropriately skilled employees, and employees will be spared an unnecessary, unpleasant introduction to the workplace.