But they looked so good in the interview . . .

Michael Santo, Ph.D.

Are you aware of the many interview misconceptions that can sabotage even the most experienced manager or HR professional? A mistake during the employee selection process can turn into a financial nightmare. Empowerment Concept’s extensive experience in human resources consulting has proven that the most common error made by managers and HR professionals is hiring based on a candidate’s past industry experience. Our research, despite the common misconception, shows that experience is not the best indicator of future success. Sales professionals with years of industry experience often don't live up to expectations. Of all the myths of the selection process, this hiring practice is the most difficult for us to change in our customers.

Regardless of a firm’s size or industry, managers continually rely upon the candidate’s experience to make hiring decisions. It is obviously easier to hire someone with past industry experience and relevant knowledge of products, services, and competition. The premise being that someone with substantial work experience will require less training and direction than a person lacking previous experience.

If this criteria is truly a predictor of future success, why do we consistently hear, "But they looked so good in the interview! What happened?" The price of basing hiring decisions on experience can be enormous, both in terms of lost opportunities and money wasted on recruiting and training a new employee. When consulting our clients, we encourage them to critically evaluate an "experienced" candidate who is currently working for a competitor. What is it your firm offers that is not offered by his current employer? Why is this candidate willing to sacrifice the perks that come with seniority and experience in exchange for beginning his career all over again?

A decade of research has shown Empowerment Concepts that more often than not, the experienced candidate is a marginal performer in his current position. He is often seeking a new home where his mediocrity won’t be noticed for years. This candidate may have seven years experience working for one of your competitors, but could these seven years of experience really be one bad year repeated seven times? Unfortunately for corporate America, this tends to be the rule rather than the exception. A large majority of hires based on experience result in nothing more than re-circulating mediocrity.

Put yourself in the shoes of a college football coach and pretend you are recruiting a new Linebacker. There are two candidates seeking the position. One has extensive high school playing experience. The other has none. The experienced candidate weighs 150 pounds and stands 5’9’’ yet possesses impeccable credentials for the sport. He knows the sport well and understands how particular strategies are used to help win the game. The second, nonexperienced candidate weighs 275 pounds of pure muscle and stands 6’4’’. He has the strength of an Olympic weight lifter and can run the 40yard dash in just four seconds. He knows football, but he hasn’t played the game since he was in grade school.

Being the coach, which player would you recruit? The lightweight with years of experience or the mass of muscle with lighting fast reflexes? Do you really believe that the lightweight’s experience can give him the edge over the physically superior candidate? No coach with sound mind would be confused about which candidate to recruit.

The problem with changing this ill-conceived approach to hiring based on experience is that it is exceedingly difficult to make this same physical comparison for non-sports positions. The contrast between applicants in today’s business interview arena is equal to this hypothetical scenario. However, rather than this contrast being visible as physical characteristics it is imbedded deep in the candidate’s inner workings: their minds and personalities.

The ability to sell, manage, or provide superior customer service is not conveyed in physical form as in the 6’4’’, 275 pound linebacker, nor is the lack of sales capability visible. And yet, a sales person, manager, or customer service representative who possesses experience but lacks the fundamental personal attributes required for top performance is just as ill suited to those jobs as our 5’8’’, 150 pound weakling is suited to the position of linebacker.

There are, of course, some people who possess the attributes needed for success in sales, management, and service who also have experience in these positions. This person is a perfect fit, representing the best of all worlds. Occasionally you will encounter a person who has legitimate reasons for leaving their employer to work for you. In reality, however, this ideal person rarely exists.

A manager should be willing to sacrifice experience in exchange for ability. The personal attributes known to support top performance over the long haul are the qualities managers should be searching for during their hiring process. If a person possesses the ability for a job, teaching him your product and service can be easily achieved. However, the opposite is not true: If the person lacks the fundamental attributes or competencies required for a position, all the coaching in the world will not help him perform at a top level. It is the ability of the person that hiring managers must focus on if they are to select, develop, and retain a superior workforce.

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Recruiting from Your Competitors – A Formula for Disaster

Michael Santo, Ph.D.

When companies look to bring on a new employee, historical myths and misconceptions can lead even the most experienced manager to the wrong decision. Many hiring mangers believe the number one criteria for selecting new employees is experience. These managers are seeking candidates who are looking for new positions in the industry or occupation in which they are currently employed. Regardless of industry, many managers feel an experienced person has a better chance of success and will require little or no training. However, basing your selection decision on experience alone can come with a hefty price tag.

Recruiting from your competition often leads to re-circulating mediocrity within an industry. The only person who benefits from this is the current employer who is quietly hoping his marginal performer will leave on his own. It doesn’t help the new employer, the employee, or the industry as a whole. Hiring a candidate with past experience will often not lead to success. This has been proven in every industry. Newly emerging industries have been forced to create a new and highly successful approach to hiring. High-tech, biotech, and advanced engineering firms are often faced with a pool of candidates who have no proof of experience. Within these industries, a person’s experience becomes obsolete in less than three years. Rather than looking for experience firms in America’s "new economy" use ability and personal attributes as the criteria for basing their hiring decisions. They look for people with intrinsic ability and then they train them as required.

Because experience in these industries is hard to come by, our clients in these industries are evaluating candidates on their inner drives, motivations, and psychology. Our clients have discovered that a person with the potential ability to perform a job will often outperform candidates hired based on a "proven" track record and past experience. This approach of hiring for ability and training for skills has consistently led these companies to strong market valuations and high profits during a period when the prices of products and services in these new industries are dropping at an unprecedented rate.

The success of this new approach to hiring is no surprise to us at RembrandtAdvantage®, an Empowerment Concepts company. A few years ago we partnered with a staffing firm in North Carolina to help them place terminally unemployed people in the hotel and hospital industry. These people where long term welfare recipients with little or no past experience. As a result, the only criterion used to place these people was an assessment of their inherent ability and potential. Using our personality profile, the Rembrandt Portrait©, our client was able to place long term unemployed candidates with an incredible rate of success. During an employee review, these people were rated nine out of ten times as either meeting or exceeding requirements! Ninety percent of the people placed in positions that matched their ability were solid to excellent workers. This is just one of many success stories related to hiring for ability.

Shifting your selection criteria from education to ability can be tricky and somewhat complex even for the most seasoned HR professional. But if you really want to hire top performing people who are well aligned to the job and who can be retained, abilities based selection is the only way to go. In the long run, what is really more challenging: Revamping the way you select and evaluate candidates or managing turnover and related performance issues?

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Interviewing the Chameleon

Michael Santo, Ph.D.

Ever hired a highly experienced, smart dressing, charming "Dr. Jekyll" only to have "Mr. Hyde" show up for work on the first day? Ever say to yourself "but he looked so good in the interview, what happened?"

Some job candidates today are excellent interviewers and in many cases, too good. These candidates have an uncanny ability to mirror the behaviors of the interviewer. They are able to understand exactly what the interviewer is looking for and then they mirror this image, making the interviewer feel as though they have found the perfect person. The challenge here is that these “interview chameleons” are usually much better stage actors than they are employees.

One customer’s story in particular tells of a job candidate who was able to exhibit every behavior that each of 4 interviewers wanted to see, let’s call this candidate “Mr. Image.” The Sales Director saw “Mr. Image” as a powerful persuader with keen interpersonal skills. The Office Manager/HR Manager was delighted to hear “Mr. Image’s” stories of diversity and how he was able to use diversity to compete in the marketplace. And the Engineering Manager was very pleased to see that “Mr. Image” was detail-oriented and would fully document customer orders and requirements, something this manager has rarely seen in a sales person.

As this perfect candidate moved further and further into the selection process, no one seemed to notice the conflicting images he was sending to everyone. In fact, the Sales Director was quite impressed with his Brooks Brothers wardrobe. The Office Manager reflected on how nice he looked in his casual attire, tan suit with a bright sky blue shirt. And his ultimate peers were all talking about how cool the new guy was daring to come to an interview in dress down clothes, Polo shirt with jeans.

How does this candidate do it? How does he change his image in such a way to give each interviewer a sense that they have found nirvana? It is his chameleon nature; pure and simple. And here are some hints to help you determine if you are interviewing Mr. Right or Mr. Image, the Chameleon candidate.

Use open-ended interview questions to get the candidate talking about prior work experiences. Ask questions like: “ I see you were with ABC company for the past 5 years. Explain for me your role within the firm, your primary duties, successes and typical customer base.” This type of question gets the candidate talking, giving the interviewer fuel for probing questions that will follow.

Then use several proven, valid Behavioral Event interview questions to evaluate past experiences. Follow up on the open-ended questions with behavioral questions like: “I see you have had considerable experience selling to large corporate buyers. Tell me about a specific sales event with a large buyer that failed to close. What did you do to position yourself and the firm to make the sale? How did you attempt to resolve the customer’s concerns and challenges? What technique did you use to demonstrate your firm’s superiority to the competition? What did you do when you learned that you did not gain the sale?”

These behavioral questions are based on the theory that a person’s past behavior on the job is the best predictor of their future job behavior. If in the past the candidate was unable to position the firm against the competition, it will be unlikely that he or she will succeed at this in the future. If this candidate showed a poor ability to recover from past rejections it is likely that he/she will struggle to rebound from future rejection.

When using behavioral questions, you need to be diligent when documenting the candidate’s responses. You need to document the Situation the candidate was in; the Objective to be accomplished in that situation; the Action the candidate took; and the Results of the action. In other words, you will want to document S.O.A.R. By documenting these aspects of the candidate’s responses, you will have a complete story of the candidate’s past experience to help you to rate the candidate’s capabilities in key areas for the position for which you are hiring.

Further, collectively develop a focus for the Behavioral Based interview questions that you will be asking the candidate. For example, in a sales manager role it would be recommended to think about probing in the areas of Persuasiveness, Negotiation, Teamwork, Resilience, Detail Ability, and the like. Then, prior to the interview, write the questions down that you would like to ask. This will help to give you focus and keep you on track during the interview.

When conducting the interview, utilize as many sets of ears as possible. Use a team interview to help catch the true response of the candidate. The team interview has an added benefit of keeping the interview focused on the more critical areas, as it is less likely that the all members of the interview will be drawn into conversations that are not insightful and could cross into areas that may have legal ramifications.

But this still may not be enough to ensure that “Mr. Right” is being selected. We recommend to all customers, large and small, to incorporate psychological profiling into the selection process. A valid, non-discriminatory profile can help pierce the surface impressions of the candidate to reveal their true inner drives, motivations, strengths and weaknesses. A valid profile can make the difference between a winning selection decision and simply the addition of one more Chameleon to the collection.

But what do you do if your interview findings are in direct conflict with the profile results? First, before using a profile, make sure it is valid, both in terms of its impact on protected classes and its predictive ability. Any firm selling a valid profile will happily provide you with this validation information. Second, use the profile results to arm yourself for your next interview with the candidate and to prepare you for reference checking. Whatever you do, don’t let the profile results make the selection decision for you. Profiles should guide you to the best hiring decision, not usurp your responsibilities to properly evaluate the candidate.

If the profile suggests that the person is a weak sales negotiator, make sure in your follow up interview that you probe for an answer to this issue: “Does the candidate have enough ability to negotiate to perform at a superior level in this position? And in your firm?” Also probe these areas when conducting reference checks. And another point here, get multi- level references, including past managers, subordinates and peers. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that just because you and the candidate know many of the same people that his/her references will be glowing. Do diligence here.

The last technique many firms use when they just aren’t one hundred percent sure that the candidate is the absolute best person for the job, is offering the position on a contingency basis. Many firms find that hiring on a 3-month contingency basis gives them a better foundation on which to make the final hiring decision. And should the candidate turn out to be “Mr. Image”, contingency hiring places you in a much better legal position to terminate the person.

“You have very little to risk when hiring on a contingency basis,” says Maria Angelini, Employment Manager for Quest Diagnostics, “It gives both you and the candidate a chance to get to know each other and it actually provides each party with many options as you approach the end of the contingency period.”

Interview Chameleons are out there in droves, and as the information economy continues to require things like emotional intelligence and refined problem solving skills to succeed, those with older, outdated skills will be more inclined than ever to act like a Chameleon.

So remember, ask open-ended questions to get the candidate talking and then probe in depth with Behavioral Event questions. If the candidate succeeds to this point, take advantage of today’s technology and use a psychological profile to help you gain insights into the candidate’s real drives and weaknesses. If you are still unsure at this point, but need to quickly employ someone, make the offer contingent on an initial introductory period.