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Interviews and assessments should work hand in hand during the hiring process. They enable you to interact with and understand the candidate, and they provide information not only around skills but around strengths and concerns .
When conducting interviews and when analyzing assessment results, it is important to ask yourself three questions:
1) Am I measuring someone's interviewing skills rather than their ability to perform? Using performance based hiring assessments, in addition to the interview, will help you look past most personal biases. This assessment/interview combination will enable you to probe deeper and find out more about the candidate's strengths and areas of concern as they relate to the work to be done and to your organization.
2) Are interviews and assessments decision-making tools rather than a way to collect information? Interviewing and assessment should be about gathering information.... You will then be able to make educated hiring decisions that are in the best interest of the organization and the candidate.
3) Am I hiring someone who is just like me rather than the best person for the job?
Make sure, as much as humanly possible, you take yourself out of the picture when assessing and interviewing candidates. They are not you and their responses and scores are uniquely their own.
Strive to hire people who are the best fit for the position, and be aware, this might translate to their scores or interview being stronger than yours... This should not be viewed as a threat to your security, but as an asset to your career and organization. Become known for making smart and objective hiring decisions and you will become more valuable to your organization.
How many times have I heard, “we hired him for his technical skills, but we had to let him go because of his lack of people skills”?
Hire not only for technical abilities, but make sure that “behavior” plays a key part in your hiring decisions.... You will then develop a strong, competent workforce.
Technical knowledge is taught and should be ever increasing in the life of an employee. Interpersonal skills and communication skills are far more difficult to teach (old habits die hard) and have significant impact on production capabilities and the everyday interactions/satisfaction of the workforce.
~ Lindsay
"When it is essential that people learn rapidly and perform at superior levels, you need objective and repeatable ways to judge candidates. No scientist would rely on interviews, feelings, or opinions to judge a scientific experiment. Neither should we in judging a candidate." Keven Wheeler
A very good article and the only disagreement I have is in the suggestion of using multi-rater feedback assessments as a hiring tool... They are simply not developed for this use. Sometimes the questions have absolutely nothing to do with the job, contain gender and race bias, and filled with subjectivity: Beware!
The May 2008 edition of Chief Learning Officer (CLO) magazine featured The Speed of Trust in an article entitled: Trust is a Competency. This prestigious magazine is well known by leading executives around the world. CLO called trust “a critical characteristic that is more essential to business performance than ever.”
The article goes on to say: “Increasingly more and more, leaders today are ‘rediscovering’ trust as they begin to see it with new eyes. Looking beyond the common view of trust as some soft, intangible, illusive social virtue, they’re learning to see it as a critical, highly relevant, and tangible asset. They’re discovering that trust affects—and changes—everything within an organization…literally every dimension, every activity, every decision, every relationship. They’re also beginning to recognize that trust is quite possibly the single most powerful and influential lever for leaders and organizations today.”
Stephen concludes the article with this practical advice for executives: “So what is the role of learning practitioners with respect to trust? I suggest it’s three-fold, corresponding to the three ways of seeing trust with new eyes:
First – always seek to frame trust within the organization in economic, not merely social, terms. By creating a compelling business case for trust, you can engage organizational buy-in and make real improvement sustainable.
Second – define leadership as 'getting results in a way that inspires trust.' In other words, personally model trust through character, competence, and demonstrated trust-building behavior. By doing this, you become the starting place for increasing trust, and your trusted reputation becomes an additional currency that carries significant value in the new economy.
Third – recognize and treat trust as a competency—as something you can do and create and measure—and help managers learn and understand how to behave in ways that establish, grow, extend, and (if needed) restore trust with all stakeholders.”
