As published in the Winnipeg Sun. How many times have you hired the wrong candidate? While it may only take weeks to recognize your mistake, the cost of that mistake can be substantial. What went wrong? More than likely mistakes were made in the interview process. A safe bet is that your staff interviewers were either charmed by the superior communications skills of your candidate, the interview questions were not effective at differentiating between individuals, or the selection process itself was flawed.

An audit of the selection process would help to uncover process failings or outright errors. One such problem for employers could include failing to review job descriptions to determine if roles have changed. In many cases, supervisors and managers focus on the job activities rather than the skills they require. In other situations, too much focus is placed on a previous successful incumbent rather than what will really be needed in the future. Only rarely do leaders ask themselves the question, “why would a candidate wish to work for our organization?” (also see previous employer branding articles)

Examining the candidate evaluation process can uncover subjective decision making rather than a process that compares and contrasts each candidate through a checklist thus grading the candidate skill sets against a list of desired skills and competencies. At the interview stage, the appropriate people may not always be involved in the process and/or there were no specific questions prepared in advance. In many cases, inexperienced interviewers who do prepare their questions innocently ask a series of broad general questions such as, “tell me about yourself?” which is absolutely useless and has no validity.

Some interviewers get very creative with questions such as, “if you were an animal, which one you would choose” or “if you were a book, what kind would you be?” These types of questions are subjective and non-productive towards matching a candidate to a position or company. Moreover, many interviewers continue to be unaware of interview questions that are prohibited by human rights legislation. It is illegal to ask a woman if she already has children and/or when she plans to have children. You cannot ask about religion, ancestry, financial situation or physical condition.

My professional experience, along with a multitude of research, confirms the notion that the quality of hiring decisions is directly related to the quality of information gained in support of these decisions. But let’s back up. What is the organization trying to find out about candidates that are being interviewed? The purpose of a candidate interview is to confirm whether or not the candidate will fit into your organization. You know from the resume that they appear to have the skills. The interview then is an attempt to measure that “candidate-job fit”.

As a result, the goal is to obtain the best information possible from the interview. To do this, interviewers need to apply objective candidate evaluation methods. The more objective the process and the more accurately each individual candidate is evaluated, the more likely your successful candidate will produce the higher levels of productivity you are seeking. In other words, organizations can no longer ignore or choose not to take advantage of resources and methodologies that have been proven effective in selecting the right candidate for the right job at the right time in the right organization.

The most effective selection strategy is to avoid simply screening the resumes by glancing over them and subjectively putting them into a yes/no pile. Instead you need to create a scoreable process where each resume is evaluated for key criteria. This creates a fair, consistent and valid review and comparison of the various candidates.

As for interview strategy, it is important to avoid unstructured interviews and instead prepare behavioural interview questions that directly relate to the job activities, skills and competencies required and have proven validity to job success. Behavioural interviews have a specific framework that must be learned and applied. While it takes a lot of work to develop the questions, the beauty of it is that the questions can be used again and again in the future and can be even more validated as time goes on.

Two other proven candidate assessment strategies include applying standardized testing for job related skills and aptitudes and evaluating workstyle / occupational personality. These two proven strategies are not being effectively utilized by employers. Both of these assessment tools are widely available and easily accessible online for both candidate fulfillment and employer scoring/reviews.

Another objective evaluation method for candidate selection is the practice of placing candidates in job try-outs, simulations, or structured exercises where their performance can be evaluated.