Should Interviews Be Outlawed?
If you are not a recruiter or an HR professional, and chances are that, if you found your way here via Aquent's website, you are not, then you're probably not familiar with ERE.net, which is an online resource center for recruiters and HR professionals (you will be required to register, at no cost to you, if you are curious enough to check it out).
Since most people reading this blog are job seekers of one form or another, and the act of job seeking usually involves interviewing, I've spent time in this space talking about ways of preparing for interviews. Among other things, I've recommended that candidates "get inside the minds of interviewers," in part by familiarizing themselves with the theories behind interviewing methods and by emphasizing that many organizations are less than organized when it comes to conducting interviews. This is one reason that I alert you to the existence of ERE.net.
The other reason is that a Dr. John Sullivan of San Francisco State University recently published a two-part article on ERE.net entitled, "Interviews: Is it Time to Blow Them Up?" (again, registration is required). In this article, Dr. Sullivan concisely presents all the reasons that interviewing, in the way it is normally practiced literally millions of times a day, is both a waste of time for the organizations relying on it as a way to assess new employees, and an unpleasant and frustrating experience for those who must endure being interviewed.
There are two choice quotes from this article that I will share with you. They come from its beginning and its ending respectively. To kick things off Dr. Sullivan writes: "I've always been curious as to why everyone continues to use interviews as a primary means of assessing candidates. Managers don't like to do them, candidates literally hate them, and as a predictive indicator of performance, they stink!"
To wrap things up he concludes, "Incidentally, if you want to know of a better way to hire, consider how you would hire a chef (or musician or writer). You certainly wouldn't spend a lot of time talking about knife skills; instead, you would put the candidate in the kitchen and then taste their food."
Now, how do you think a hiring manager would react if, when she invited you in for an interview, you replied, "Actually, why don't you just let me start working so you can see what I can do?"
