Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair

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 received training to do this job impartially (4) Everyone on the interview panel agrees they don't make decisions just based on gut feeling! or saying I have a good feeling about this person!

To summarize, Interview is okay if it's done correctly - It's not great though but not doing interviews have its problems/biases too :)

"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 process. It reminds me of orchestra selection, and how separating judgement of personal traits of a person (age, race, gender, etc.) from the "interview" process led to more diverse people selected for the orchestra.

Would it be better to move the interview process away from the team and the managers involved, and instead have a separate department do all of the interviewing and hiring? I think that could cut down on the popularity poisoning, but maybe also give people who have a disability but otherwise excellent skill set, a chance.

https://jamesboldin.com/2011/07/27/malcolm-gladwells-blink-p...

And not interviewing is worse than useless and extremely unfair.

Companies invest so much time and resources in screening because the of a suboptimal or unqualified employee is far greater than the benefit of a good employee. A poor fit employee is a major drag.

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 they're all working on problems the scale of Google or Astra Zeneca.

Here's a recent article saying that "EU jobs crisis as employers say applicants don't have the right skills"[1].

Well then, train them or be more flexible since people can also learn and train themselves if you give them the chance. No candidate will have 100% math to the skills you want.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/04/08/eu-jobs-crisis-...