Weird & Wacky Job Interviews: Bad Hiring and Bad Psychology

Although the job interview is the most frequently used method for hiring employees, it is very often misused because many interviewers insist on using wacky methods and asking weird questions. The irony is that many of these interviewers firmly believe that their hiring methods work, but psychological research suggests otherwise. Here are some of my favorites:

Weird question #1: "If you were a car, what kind would you be?" You would be surprised how often this question, or its many variations ("animal,""superhero," "color," etc.) are asked. The flimsy justification is that work motivation or the candidate's personality can somehow be determined from the response (e.g., being a racecar is supposedly indicative of being a motivated, "go-getter"). Nonsense! This is an amateurish attempt at a projective test (think Rorschach inkblots). Projective tests are much criticized and inaccurate, even when administered by trained psychologists. In the hands of a job interviewer, attempts to uncover someone's motivation or personality through such questions is simply foolish.

Weird question #2: "What is your favorite book/movie?" Same problem as the car question. The interpretation of the answers are subjective and likely have no relationship to the candidate's potential as an employee.

Weird question #3: "Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?" Although this may be interpreted as a means for finding out if an applicant is motivated to advance in the organization, there are two possible problems with this question. First, it is prone to getting a socially desirable answer (e.g., "I see myself moving up the ladder in this company"). Second, it can trigger responses that might lead to discrimination (e.g., "I would like to get married and start a family"). This question, like the others, gains little information that is actually related to the applicant's potential as an employee.

Weird question #4: "Tell me about yourself." This question is often used because the interviewer didn't bother to take the time to develop a good set of interview questions. As a model for constructing job interviews, I often use the analogy of a good college/high school test. Imagine taking a course where the final exam consists of the question, "Tell me everything you learned in this class?" Students would consider the test unfair ("you expect me to talk about EVERYTHING???") and would yield such a wide range of essay responses that they would be almost impossible to grade.

How about wacky interviewing strategies? Well, my all-time favorite is the former student who applied for a job as a kindergarten teacher and was subjected to a panel "stress" interview [imagine the sort of questioning Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan is undergoing in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings]. After undergoing hostile, CIA-type questioning from a panel of senior teachers and the school principals, the applicant decided that maybe it wasn't the sort of group she wanted to work with. Even worse, her performance in a stress interview likely had nothing to do with her potential as a kindergarten teacher.

Good hiring procedures should be designed to determine if the applicant has the right knowledge, skills, abilities, and other relevant characteristics that are related to (predictive) of performance in the job. All methods should be designed to try to assess the candidate's potential success in the particular job. Good job selection is science, not art. Stay away from the weird questions. They simply don't work.

Follow me on twitter

http://twitter.com/#!/ronriggio