Marshall McLuhan, in his revolutionary work, The Medium Is the Message, cited that we often look at the manner in which a product is presented to us rather than at the benefits of the product itself. Interviewing to find a good employee is susceptible to the same phenomenon. We experience it all the time: THE BEST INTERVIEWEE GETS THE JOB and the best performer, the person that could do the job best, doesn’t. This is one issue of which we like to WARN EMPLOYERS. The candidate is not the best performer just because he or she interviews the best. Some candidates are exceptional at GETTING a job, but lousy at KEEPING a job. We should be mindful of this every time we interview and then force ourselves to look at previous performances of our candidates rather than HOW they interview.
Hiring is one of the most emotionally stressful things we do. Based on whom we hire, our ego, professionalism, authority, and management status are evaluated by others. Let’s face it; hiring is a distressful, uneasy thing to do. No matter how good we think we are at it, hiring is still a personal and professional risk. Few of us are ever really comfortable with hiring and probably never will be.
The Why
Because hiring is stressful, we often make it to be what it isn’t. Often the interviewing process becomes totally unrelated to the function of the position for which we are hiring. The criterion with which we start to fill a position is far removed from that necessary to measure the candidate’s ability to successfully function in the job. Interviewing becomes a beauty contest, measuring who can interview and sell themselves the best, rather than a system of techniques to discover who can function best in the job. We become so obsessed with correctly interviewing that we lose sight of the whole reason we are interviewing. The MEDIUM of the interview becomes the MESSAGE of hiring a good employee.
The How
To keep from hiring the best interviewer instead of the best candidate for your job, follow a few simple rules.
First, recognize that this phenomenon occurs. Recognize that the process of interviewing can become a staged affair where we look for the best performer at interviewing. The result of this is that the interviewing process becomes so far removed from the real issues of assessing the right skills of a candidate, that we end up looking for people.
Second, draw up a realistic, objective list of requirements based on your needs, duties and responsibilities. Start with what the function is now, and proceed through to extra things you’d like if you could get them. It is important to separate the necessities in the function from the extras desired in objective, quantifiable terms. Just because a person has been a controller for 10 years doesn’t mean he or she can do the job twice as well as someone who has 5 years of experience as a controller.
Third, lay out a plan of interviewing. Include in your plan the people who will be involved, the exact number of interviews the hiring manager will do, and the objective of each interview. Identify specific goals of each first, second, and third interview. Make these goals objective, and then stick to the plan.
Fourth and most important, watch out for subjective liking of candidates. We are not saying one should hire people who they do not like, but we often hire on a basis of whom we liked instead of their ability to do the job. We access personality, compatibility, and personal gut feelings more than objective abilities to perform. One good way to avoid this mistake is to give a patterned interview. Ask a set of written questions to every candidate. This provides a concrete group of answers that can be objectively compared to one another and allows you to assess abilities separated from personalities. You can still use a compatibility factor, but this format helps to prevent the interviewer from forgetting to ask objective, functional questions that allow true comparisons. Liking whom you hire is important – in fact it’s essential – but that aspect of the relationship should not obfuscate the person’s ability to do the job.
The manner in which people interview is important, and their ability to sell themselves is essential to the hiring process. However, the MEDIUM of the interview should not be the only MESSAGE by which a person is hired.
Tony Beshara is owner and president of Babich & Associates. Beshara has been in business since 1973, and he alone averages $2.5 – $4 million per year in billings. If you have any questions about this article, please call (214) 823-9999.
© Tony Beshara, Babich & Associates
