If hiring is so important, why are hiring managers left to their own devices, conducting inconsistent interviews and treating them like social get-togethers? Here are the worst offenders when it comes to bizarre interviews.
Recruitment matters. Great employees deliver great outcomes, which is why hiring the best person for your role makes an enormous impact on the success of your organisation.
BBC shares insights from author Alison Green, creator of workplace advice column, Ask a Manager.
“You’d think that employers would put real effort into how they interview and hire. You’d expect that they’d conduct rigorous screening of job applicants, and use real data to figure out which interview questions vet candidates most effectively. Yet in many cases, you’d be wrong.”
“They give their interviewers little or no training and often leave them completely on their own when it comes to figuring out what to ask job candidates. As a result, we’ve got some really bad interviews happenings out there.”
Here are common mistakes that make some job interviews downright weird.
Unstructured, social get-togethers
There are hiring managers who conduct unstructured interviews, treating them more like social events. The chat pleasantly with candidates in a casual, “get to know you” way, instead of diving into their key skills and experience to truly understand if they will succeed in the role
“Sometimes candidates leave these interviews feeling like they really built rapport – but they realise later that they never really got to talk about the job and how they’d approach it. And, no surprise, this interview-style leaves hiring managers hiring the candidate who they clicked with the most – which doesn’t have any correlation to who’s best matched with the job.”
Using the wrong questions
Many of us are familiar with strange questions, such as, “if you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?” or even “What would I find in your refrigerator right now?”
These questions, while they may seem clever or relevant, they actually have no connection to the role and can make candidates uneasy. Candidates worry if there’s a “correct” answer they don’t know about, or overthink the question.
As Green shares, “I even once heard from a job seeker whose interviewer asked to look in her handbag – saying that it would show him how organised she was.”
Using the wrong type of skills testing
Some interviewers have clearly been told that it’s helpful to devise exercises or simulations to see candidates in action – which it is – but they don’t quite get the execution right.
“I heard from one job seeker, interviewing for a job in education, whose interview took place in a crowded sandwich shop. During the meeting, her interviewers pretended to be rowdy children who she had to manage – they started running around the restaurant and throwing things at each other, while innocent bystanders tried to eat lunch.”
Making interviews a one-way conversation
Bad interviewing techniques won’t help you evaluate candidates as well as you need to. You need to remember interviews are two-way streets, and as much about your candidates as they are about you and your organisation.
Strong candidates will evaluate you right back and pass their own judgments. In the cases that Green shares, sometimes not good ones!
The best way to conduct interviews
We need to get serious about hiring. This means training your hiring managers on what skills and experience they need to look for and assess for new hires to truly excel in their roles. It means designing and developing interview structures that test for these things, instead of leaving them to wing it and conduct interviews without rigour.
“On the candidate side of things, it’s easy to feel like you’re at the mercy of terrible interviewers, and to some extent that’s true. But candidates can also push back when an interview seems to be going off the rails. If you’re asked a silly question like what breakfast cereal you most identify with, you can say, ‘That’s an interesting question. Why do you ask?’”
For candidates stuck with an interviewer who isn’t actually talking about the job or your possible fit for it, simply ask, “Would it be all right for me to talk you through my professional background?” Ask directly for them to tell you more about the job and what they’re looking for in a new hire.
“Ultimately, this one is on employers to fix, and the only way to do it is with real training in how to hire – something you wouldn’t think would be so hard to find.”
Source
Why some interviews are downright weird
BBC