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Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

psychologytoday.com

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Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#21

Post by usrusr »

Ajay-p wrote: post #4
EhsanEtezad wrote: post #2

I am doing my PhD in Organizational Psychology so let me add here: The title is misleading a bit. The predictor power of an interview changes as a company gets better at doing interviews. What do I mean by getting better? (1) Asking the same questions (2) Having a BARS scale for scoring, which means you define the characteristics of a good response versus bad response before interviewing anyone (3) Interviewers recei…

"Interview is okay if it's done correctly" IMHO and experience, it is rarely, if ever, done correctly. Most of the interview process now is a popularity contest, including how attractive you are, whether or not the team likes you, if you're physically fit, and a bread basket of other criteria that has very little to do with the actual job. And if you have a disability, it can be a dehumanizing and discriminatory proc…

Popularity contest can be very rational though, when unpopular candidates that are winning in other metrics lead to your existing team looking elsewhere. Or worse: only the subset of your existing team that easily finds other employment.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#22

Post by Propelloni »

Ajay-p wrote: post #4
EhsanEtezad wrote: post #2

I am doing my PhD in Organizational Psychology so let me add here: The title is misleading a bit. The predictor power of an interview changes as a company gets better at doing interviews. What do I mean by getting better? (1) Asking the same questions (2) Having a BARS scale for scoring, which means you define the characteristics of a good response versus bad response before interviewing anyone (3) Interviewers recei…

"Interview is okay if it's done correctly" IMHO and experience, it is rarely, if ever, done correctly. Most of the interview process now is a popularity contest, including how attractive you are, whether or not the team likes you, if you're physically fit, and a bread basket of other criteria that has very little to do with the actual job. And if you have a disability, it can be a dehumanizing and discriminatory proc…

That's how large corporations in non-knowledge work areas used to hire for decades. For knowledge work the results were not great, hence the new approach. It doesn't seem to be perfect either, so let's iterate. I have no clue how...

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#23

Post by jarjoura »

No matter the structure of the interview, it will always come down to things we cannot control in the end.

1. You will have shit days and your brain will actively work against you, no matter how qualified you are for the job. If your interview happens to be on that day, well, it's just unfortunate.

2. Your interviewer also has shit days that actively work against them, no matter how many interviews they've given in the past to calibrate their expectations. If your interview happens to be on that day, well, just the one tiny slip-up, or mistake, or forgetting one simple test case, could mean they wrote you off, no matter how strong the rest of your interview went. When they leave feedback, it will frame your other interviews too. So yea, that's just unfortunate.

3. You were 1 day behind another candidate, who was interviewed and loved, after the company spent weeks searching for them. No matter how amazing you do, even hitting it out of the park, they likely already know they want the other person, and you are being interviewed as the backup should they reject the offer.

All we can do, is keep at it, practice interviewing, keep studying and try to sleep well the night before. We can clean up our appearances too, looking like we care to be here. There's definitely a difference between someone who walks into an interview, looking smug and uninterested, versus someone passionate about the role and excited to be part of the mission of the company. Those are the things we can control. Hopefully, with enough preparation, luck and timing, you get the job.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#24

Post by RajT88 »

floor2 wrote: post #14
RajT88 wrote: post #5

> The task is rendered even more difficult by the fact that most people lie in job interviews. Woah what? Seriously? Back when I was starting my career, I had an acquaintance tell me that "everyone lies" and to feel free to pad my resume, because "everyone does it" and if I didn't do it, then my overall impression will be discounted anyways down to below what my actual capabilities were. I always chalked that up to h…

Seems like an obvious case of "shades of grey" vs a binary thing. Most people don't blatantly lie and claim they were the CEO of Apple. But does a random mid-level engineer at Apple slightly exaggerate their role on a team during an interview? Subjective, but likely very common. Plus, many jobs are almost intractable to appropriately assign value to. If you were one of 5 people pitching a deal to a company, and it wo…

This is apparently what was cited.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0021-9029....

Interesting stuff.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#25

Post by Rinzler89 »

noah91734 wrote: post #17
Rinzler89 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry no, that's why you have a trial/probation period even in Europe, ranging from a month to a couple of years when you can fire them without any cause or severance. It's precisely so you can gauge their performance on the job without any risk to the employer. So what's the issue here? But companies are being needlessly pedantic about only wanting to hire "the best of the best" and nothing else will suffice as if t…

This would be great. It's odd to me that we in the US get the worst of both worlds: despite at-will employment laws and almost no employment contracts, it's difficult to get hired because companies are so afraid of bad hires, and companies don't exercise their right to fire people who don't work out. We hire like it's hard to fire people!

>We hire like it's hard to fire people!

I think you're quite mistaken here.

Come to Europe and see, the job market is basically frozen, while people on HN say in the US they have so many jobs options right now that they can be picky about only choosing the ones with 100% WFH, while here I can't even get replies to jobs demanding commute to the office every day.

You don't know how good you have it over there.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#26

Post by kagakuninja »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #16

Interviewing is important. That said, I've worked at small companies (4 people) and large ones (30K+ people), and in my experience the overwhelming majority of candidates can be screened effectively by going through their resume with them and asking them simple questions, like: 1. What was the problem you were trying to solve? Why did you solve it this way? 2. If you were the decision maker, why did you choose this t…

As the article points out, we think we are making rational decisions, when in fact we are heavily influenced by subconscious biases. In particular, we favor people we like. That gives an edge to candidates that are friendly and attractive.

Since I am an introvert and on the autistic spectrum, traditional interviews are an uphill battle. Even reasonable ones like you describe.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#27

Post by Rinzler89 »

emestifs wrote: post #19
Rinzler89 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry no, that's why you have a trial/probation period even in Europe, ranging from a month to a couple of years when you can fire them without any cause or severance. It's precisely so you can gauge their performance on the job without any risk to the employer. So what's the issue here? But companies are being needlessly pedantic about only wanting to hire "the best of the best" and nothing else will suffice as if t…

And in US employment is at-will, no? What exactly is the risk for a company? Rogue employee stealing IP? Any employee can do that already. Can't fire a low performer? We just saw more 300k people in the industry let go in 2022/2023/2024. And at-will, trial period already exist. If anything the risk is for the employee. But if companies stop trying to be Google and stick to their actual level of prestige, employees wo…

>What exactly is the risk for a company?

Maybe getting sued if they fire candidates fitting DEI or other protected class?

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#29

Post by Rinzler89 »

kagakuninja wrote: post #26
ARandomerDude wrote: post #16

Interviewing is important. That said, I've worked at small companies (4 people) and large ones (30K+ people), and in my experience the overwhelming majority of candidates can be screened effectively by going through their resume with them and asking them simple questions, like: 1. What was the problem you were trying to solve? Why did you solve it this way? 2. If you were the decision maker, why did you choose this t…

As the article points out, we think we are making rational decisions, when in fact we are heavily influenced by subconscious biases. In particular, we favor people we like. That gives an edge to candidates that are friendly and attractive. Since I am an introvert and on the autistic spectrum, traditional interviews are an uphill battle. Even reasonable ones like you describe.

>Since I am an introvert and on the autistic spectrum

Unfortunately interviews are a way for companies to also screen out people on the spectrum without committing legal discrimination.

A lot of employers are looking to hire more than just a silent machine that takes Jira tickets as input and outputs code to git, but people tend to hire other people who are similar to them in culture, behavior and personality (humans gonna human, tribal mentality is still deep in us) hence the semi-bullshit "culture fit".

Any kind of disability, especially the non-physical ones, are gonna work against you in most job interviews.

Re: Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

#30

Post by emestifs »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #27
emestifs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in US employment is at-will, no? What exactly is the risk for a company? Rogue employee stealing IP? Any employee can do that already. Can't fire a low performer? We just saw more 300k people in the industry let go in 2022/2023/2024. And at-will, trial period already exist. If anything the risk is for the employee. But if companies stop trying to be Google and stick to their actual level of prestige, employees wo…

>What exactly is the risk for a company? Maybe getting sued if they fire candidates fitting DEI or other protected class?

That's a reasonable assumption. I wonder if it's really going to hold up in court though. Basically wouldn't that imply once a non-white, non-male is hired you're basically with a high probability asking to be sued if you ever terminate their employment? That seems too broad to hold up in court. Couldn't the company say this person failed to meet expectations, so we decided to part ways? But, yeah, sure that's a risk, but idk if that's the real reason companies have all these hoops in their hiring process.
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