Here’s an interesting article about Microsoft’s attempts to improve the job interview process. As part of “Job Interview 2.0″, Microsoft’s interviewers didn’t just ask questions that would test an applicant’s ability to perform her duties and get along with her co-workers. They also asked a series of brain teasers, such as, “how would you determine the weight of a Boeing 747?”
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft found that these questions were completely useless when it came to determining which applicants would perform well for the company. But that’s not the end of the story:
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s realization came too late: a whole mini-industry has spawned around the concept of Job Interview 2.0. If Microsoft did it, it must work, right? There are books written on brainteasers in the interview, consultants who will help your company annoy the hell out candidates with your very own custom brainteasers, and now, everyone from small software firms to big ole’ banks are asking stupid riddle questions.
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Back when I was the sales manager at a rental car location, I thought of a way to improve the job interview process. We used a two-stage process, in which I would interview an applicant, and then the applicant would talk to the general manager. After interviewing all of the applicants we’d called, we’d decide who would get the job.
Here was my improvement: I would determine some basic sales skill that the applicant lacked (I encountered a grand total of one applicant who had every sales skill I was looking for). Sometimes, they didn’t use my name when addressing me. Sometimes, they didn’t make enough eye contact. Sometimes, they would respond to questions like, “what makes you the best applicant for this job?” with answers like, “maybe I’m not the best applicant.”
I would pick one skill and tell the applicant that the general manager would only hire her if she had that skill. For example, I would say to a woman who looked didn’t make eye contact, “Ken (the general manager) thinks that the most important quality for a salesperson is making eye contact. If you don’t make more eye contact when you talk to him than you did when you talked to me, he will not hire you.” Then I’d talk to Ken at the end of his interview and see if the applicant took my suggestion.
Clever, huh? We get to see immediately who is willing to learn, and who isn’t.
But there was a problem: almost no-one would take my suggestion. If I told a guy to speak up, he would mumble all the way through his interview with Ken. If I told him to say that his self-confidence made him perfect for the job, he’d walk into Ken’s office and say, “maybe I’m not the best applicant.”
We hired about a dozen agents during my tenure at that office. One already had everything we were looking for. Two went out of their way to incorporate my suggestions into their interview with the general manager. Those three made plenty of money for themselves and for the company. The other nine performed about as well as you’d expect. And guess what? The three that performed well all would have been hired anyway, if we had just used standard interviewing procedures.
Toward the end of my tenure, Ken and I did come up with a way to improve the hiring process. Instead of giving a better interview, we’d get better applicants.
Because of restrictions from the national office, we were completely handcuffed as to the money and benefits that we could offer, so we changed the wording of our newspaper add. We added this line:
Management Experience Preferred
That didn’t get us a whole lot of applicants with management experience, but it did get us a whole lot of applicants who aspired to be managers. Suddenly, we had more quality applicants than we knew what to do with.
Same job, same benefits, same pay. Same interview process. But the addition of one line to the newspaper ad solved our personnel problems overnight.
(via reddit)
(cross posted at appletree)
