A colleague recently posted the following question in one of our forums:
Why do interviews go wrong and what impact does this have on the company?
What are the costs of making a bad hire?
Jay Niblick, another colleague, gave the following answer which I thought could be helpful to our group here at TMI:
Interviewing is a great way to get to know the candidate’s superficial social skills; a moderately good way to understand their ability to think on their feet, and a miserable way to identify their core talents, strengths and weaknesses as they relate to the job. Where it goes wrong is not that it is a flawed technique or approach specifically. It is more the fact that interviewing, in and of itself, will never be a sufficient way to discover what you need to know in order to make the best hiring decision.
Verbally asking someone what they are good at (and not) is an unreliable way to gather such information. Hiring managers who incorporate scientific, validated, psychometric assessments that accurately quantifies a candidate’s competencies make significantly better hiring decisions. Employees hired with this information perform better, have greater job satisfaction and stay longer.
To that, let me add that according to a recent Fox News commentary, employee turnover, which is mostly likely the result of a bad hire, costs U.S. businesses over $5 billion per year. And that does not include the lost productivity from an under-performer and the loss of productivity until another employee is hired.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed. The good news is there are reliable, cost-effective tools that will provide the solution.
I welcome your comments.
Bob