Get Ready for Changes in Interviewing!

The most read topic on The ECI Blog is about behavioral event interviewing and how to properly answer these questions.  Many people are becoming very familiar with the behavioral event interviewing process and are getting coaching prior to their interviews from their placement counselors.  This, of course, has the effect of masking an individual candidate’s true potentials.

For many years in Europe, employers have been inviting potential candidates to simulation workshops as a part of the selection process.  This is a very time-consuming and costly step, but considering that the employment dismissal regulations are so much more stringent in many countries than they are in the US,  the process provides real understanding of a candidate’s real capabilities.

ECI has experience in simulations, given that we offer workshops and assessment centers for current employees.  Taking that knowledge into account, and knowing that simulations are good assessment tools, we have recently incorporated scenarios within our updates and improvements to our Structured Interview Process.

What is a scenario?  This is a simulated exercise that candidates complete during the interview process to see how they will respond under pressure, how able they are to think on their feet, and to evaluate what type of experiences they have had.  Good scenarios enable the interviewer to assess some of the more subtle talents, such as judgment, decision-making, knowledge of the business environment and how to devise a good strategy for solving a typical problem.

By seeing how candidates address the scenarios, how much urgency they put behind taking action or not taking, action as the case may be, and how much depth of the business environment they actually apply, the interviewer gains a real understanding of how the individual might react after the hire.  The very best scenarios are those which might have occurred in the particular employer’s environment.

Think about several situations at your company that have been mishandled or that have the potential to be mishandled by employees who lack the skills and abilities you require in a particular position.  The best scenarios are realistic and typical of the work that is part of the job you are filling.  Here are a couple of scenarios for your reference:

1. Our organization has a very flat managerial structure.  You will find yourself working with people from different disciplines who often have differing objectives and work styles.  Tell me how you would handle working with the President of the company when she knows nothing of your work, yet is trying to demand that you follow her lead on the approach to a particular project.  What strategy would you recommend?  How would you challenge her ideas?
2. Our clients drive our projects.  We cannot control clients’ calendars and so we must adjust our own priorities in order to keep several projects moving along successfully.  Tell me how you would respond when two clients call on the same day and ask for completion dates that overlap on major projects.  Assume that both of these clients are major accounts and each has a big-ticket project for you to complete.  What problems are you likely to encounter?  How will you address these problems?

Once you have assembled six to ten examples, ask a broad range of your current employees in the job to tell you how they would address each scenario.  Evaluate all the responses and determine which responses are best, which are poorest, and which are only average.  If you have one of your scenarios that everyone does well on or everyone does poorly on, eliminate it.   This scenario is either too hard or too easy and is one that really will not return much in the interview process, since it is unable to separate top performers from less effective performers.

By taking time to prepare your scenarios in this way, you will have a better idea of how to assess your candidates’ responses and will be able to recognize candidates who have better potential than others from your pool.   As you use the scenarios, be careful not to lead candidates by offering any feedback or response confirmation.  Some candidates are very good assessors of people and you could be influencing the responses by providing responses.

If you would like more information about using scenarios in your interview process, give ECI a call and we can assist you in upgrading your selection process.

Why WOULDN’T You Use a Personality Assessment?

Applicants are trained to make good impressions in an interview.  Go to any retail bookstore and you’ll find an entire section of resources dedicated to helping job seekers “sell themselves” to potential employers.  Go to any college and you’ll find courses on how to effectively “ace” an interview.

Good performance in an interview setting (including a well written resume) does not always translate to long-term success.  In fact, studies have shown that standard interview techniques are about as effective as flipping a coin.  Additionally, the American Psychological Association states “67% of all job applicants’ resumes contain misrepresentations.”

That is why so many world class organizations have turned to the use of personality assessments to gain an objective perspective of their applicants’ true potential for the job.  When used correctly, personality assessments can substantially increase the effectiveness of any interview process.

Just like anything else, however, there are good assessments and there are bad assessments.  The trick is to make sure that you find a valid tool that will meet your company’s needs.

Quick tips to finding and using the right personality assessment:

• Have a clear purpose – Understand what you are trying to achieve through the use of a personality assessment.  For instance, are you looking to reduce tunrover?  Increase new hire productivity?  Find the right “fit” to your culture?  Know in advance.

• Make sure the assessment is valid – Any reputable assessment provider will provide you with a copy of the assessment’s validation study (technical report).  Ask the provider how their tool complies with EEO and OFCCP fair hiring standards.

• Understand your specific requirements – If you are looking to use an assessment to hire outside sales people you probably shouldn’t be looking for a 2-hour, “pen and paper” assessment.  You’d be better off using a 25-minute, online assessment that self-scores!

• Make sure the assessment measures job-specific criteria – Good assessments can be customized to any position/role within your company through a study of existing staff members.  Remember, always target the system.

• Beware of pass/fail tests – Personality assessments should be used as a tool in a multi-staged interview process.  A good rule of thumb is to use the information yielded by an assessment for no more than 20% of your hiring decision.

• Assessment support – How do you need to be supported by the assessment provider?  Do you want telephone feedback support?  Are you looking to be trained?  The best assessments will actually provide you with interview questions to use based on the results.

• Track results – Using an assessment tool shouldn’t be a “nice to have,” it should produce measurable results for your organization.  Identify key metrics upfront and track the efficacy of the system on an annual basis.

As one of our Fortune 500 client’s recently said, “its not why would you use a personality assessment in your selection process, its why wouldn’t you?”

Diversity and Cultural Fit

We often hear about leaders of companies who avoid the use of assessment tools because they believe that these tools could screen out diverse candidates and could expose their organizations to lawsuits.  Is this true or false?

The answer to that one is, it depends….If you utilize a tool that is not well constructed and tends to score populations or groups differently, then the answer is probably true.  This is why you need to do some diligence before instituting the use of any tools within your talent management systems.  Avoid the use of tools that must be hand-scored or interpreted by an individual, as these may generate rater bias.  Styles inventories are fine for development and team building, but should not be used for selection purposes.  Tests that are easy to fake, such as word inventories (which statement/term is most or least like you) should also be avoided, unless the test documentation can provide high reliability and validity.

Be sure to ask the test provider for the technical report or validation study before introducing any new tool within your company and have that report reviewed by someone familiar with testing to ensure that the findings are sufficient to demonstrate reliability and validity.  Also, ask about disparate impact on protected classes to see what studies have been done and what proof the test provider can offer you that the tool does not discriminate.

The research around the importance of cultural fit could cause companies to put diversity aside in favor of only hiring people who match a particular success model, since these people should have a better chance of success.  When this occurs, it is generally a result of some key factors.

1. The test being used in fact causes disparate impact as it scores.  If it didn’t, then all people, regardless of gender, race, age, or ethnicity, who demonstrate particular preferences or tendencies will match the core factors for success.
2. Too much emphasis is being placed upon the results of the test.  This is frequently a problem where training is not consistently offered in how to use test results and how not to use test results.
3. Avoid the use of a test that produces a Recommendation – Good Match to Position, Poor Match to Position – Recommended or Not Recommended, then you increase the chances that your managers will look at this bottom line first and put aside the information they gathered in interviews or in the work experiences.
4. Hiring managers don’t really know what factors lead to success in a particular role or position.  They tend to look for and hire people who are more like them, rather than people who demonstrate the core factors for success for a particular role.

Note that we’re talking about core factors for success.  If you want to encourage diversity, stick to the core factors for success and hire people who are motivated by the work and the general milieu of your culture, rather than they possess one or two key traits that you know are common to people in your company.  We once had a client who refused to look at any candidate who didn’t have a score of 50% or higher on Pace/Urgency.  We had to do a good deal of education to show that Pace/Urgency wasn’t the only core factor for success.

Put less emphasis on secondary style factors, and avoid doing as our client above did, unless you are driving change in your culture.  If you need people with more initiative, then look for individuals who possess independence, high energy, a bit more tendency to take risks and who are quite flexible.  These tendencies are all readily measurable in a good personality assessment.  Once your new hires are on the job, however, make sure to manage them as they need to be managed, or they will soon move elsewhere!

If you follow these simple principles, then you will be able to hire a diverse population who are a cultural fit with your organization.  Using good assessment tools isn’t something you need to be afraid of.  Consider Home Depot.  The EEOC recommended that they include such measures to help hiring managers make better hiring decisions on the basis of more objective information, after a suit of discrimination was raised.