I gave a company some feedback on their (bad) interview questions
**names of people and organisations have been anonymised to avoid putting anyone on blast**
I am a recent applicant for a position at Global Inc. I understand that you are the hiring manager for this role, namely âInternal HR Consultantâ. Furthermore, I understand that you are also the Director of Human Resources and I therefore have some concerns regarding your recruitment process that I would like to bring to your attention.Â
My application was being considered for the aforementioned role and I had a first round Skype interview with Peter Smith on 23 January. I was subsequently informed on 26 January that my application was unsuccessful. I believe the recommendation not to proceed with my application to be procedurally fair, as referring to said interview as abysmal would be an understatement. Indeed, had a candidate provided the same responses in an interview I conducted, my recommendation would have been the same. However, I do believe that the interview was substantively unfair as I have serious concerns regarding the validity and reliability of the interview questionsâ ability to predict job-fit, cultural-fit, or future performance.
I am writing to you, not to make any demands, but rather because I believe that Global Inc. does valuable work and that a problematic recruitment process might be disqualifying top talent and as such hampers Global Inc.âs ability to build diverse teams, instil a high-performance culture, and create an ideal employer brand.
During the interview with Peter, it seemed that he was following a standardised or semi-structured interview schedule. Therefore, given my answers, I believe the decision not to advance my application was procedurally fair. However, I believe the following concerns represent a significant problem regarding your recruitment processâ substantive fairness:
Question: From all the organisations you can choose to work for, why did you choose to apply to Global Inc.?
At most, this question allows the interviewer to gauge the extent to which a candidate has prepared for the interview and whether they are aware of the organisationâs core business. However, if one is to make the reasonable assumption that this question is used to make a selection decision, it appears the question attempts to determine if the candidate considers Global Inc. to be an employer of choice or not. Of course, being an employer of choice is important for an organisation to attract top talent, but using it as a measurement criteria in the recruitment process is problematic as it implies an underpinning belief that candidates who consider Global Inc. to be an employer of choice are the best candidates. Strong employer brands have been shown to enable organisations to attract top talent, however, there is not sufficient evidence to support the notion that buy-in to an employer brand predicts job-fit, cultural-fit or future performance.
This question also appears to rely on an overconfidence in Global Inc.âs employer brand, at the expense of consideration for current labour market trends. Broadly speaking, there is a global over-supply of skilled talent - this is especially the case for the HR Profession. As such, selecting candidates based on their apparent perception of Global Inc.âs employer brand could be disqualifying high skilled candidates who may have been motivated to apply due to labour market conditions. Given the job listingâs mention of a 2-3 year commitment, I believe it is also fair to assume that this question attempts to elicit responses that might indicate the likelihood of the candidate exhibiting Organisational Citizenship Behaviour towards Global Inc. Organisational Citizenship Behaviour, however, has been found to be a function of post-appointment factors such as organisational justice, organisational support and role efficacy. Therefore, an attempt to assess a candidateâs perception of an employer brand - before appointment has taken place - would arguably not be a valid predictor of commitment to the organisation or project.Â
Additionally, it is unlikely that a self-reported motivation to join - especially under interview conditions - will provide the interviewer with reliable data regarding the candidateâs value system and how that compares to the values promoted by the organisation. This question is more likely to prompt the candidate into presenting an inflated view of the organisationâs employer brand and achievements, or regurgitating publicly available information such as mission statements. Therefore, questions such as these overemphasise the significance of the employer brand, underplays the significance of job content and disregard key contextual factors, arguably resulting in warped or incomplete assessments of a candidateâs suitability.
Question: Provide me with an example of a leadership position youâve been in, what you did, how you led and what the results were.
Self-reports of leadership enactment is not always an accurate representation of someoneâs approach to leadership, especially under interview conditions. Short of a thematic content analysis of responses, questions such as this offer the interviewer nothing more than an overview of pervading notions of effective leadership in popular leadership discourse. This question is decontextualised, is unlikely to provide any insight into the candidateâs leadership potential, nor is it likely to present an accurate representation of how the candidate enacts leadership in real-world situations.
Although mainstream conceptualisations of leadership are often presented as context-neutral, leadership is in fact a highly context-specific social process of meaning creation. Due to the context-specific nature of leadership, an example of how a leadership role was approached in one context might not necessarily offer sufficient data for determining the potential of a candidate to act in a leadership role in another context. Furthermore, self-reports are arguably not the most reliable tool for assessing said leadership potential. In both my professional career and academic research I have experienced first hand how persons report to have one approach to leadership and then enact an entirely different one - often unconsciously. It would be advisable to ask more specific questions that relate to leadership potential within a given context and perhaps to complement these questions with an overview question such as the one in question.
A final concern regarding the use of this type of question in making a selection decision is that it implies that leadership skills and behaviours cannot be modified, given that it asks about a specific instance of leadership enactment. As my aforementioned comments illustrate, this question does not provide an indication of leadership potential but simply how leadership was chosen to be enacted within one context. As Peter explained to me, the role I was applying for, as well as future roles would very likely include leadership responsibilities. Given the seeming importance of leadership for this role, considering the context-contingent nature of leadership and since leadership can be developed, I would argue that this question and its subsequent probes were not nuanced enough to elicit valid responses to make a fair selection decision.
Scenario question: You need to recruit 100 recipients from the population of current scholarship holders to invest 10% of their scholarships into a special investment fund. This will have significant short- and long term financial implications on scholarship holders. You have 5 field officers to assist with the project which needs to launch in 3 months. What specific tasks would you have for the first 3 weeks and what would you do in the last 2 weeks before the launch?
First, I feel I should mention that I understand that certain interview questions are designed to elicit information regarding transferable skills and thus need not be phrased as being explicitly linked to the job in question. Furthermore, I also understand that the position I applied for requires a strong ability for project management, which this scenario question clearly addresses. However, I still have several concerns regarding this question, the most prominent of which is its content. Like candidates are expected to write cover letters and adjust CVs according to the position and company they apply to, so too should interview questions be contextualised within the specific role the candidate is applying for. Failure to do so exposes the recruitment process to risk regarding both reliability and validity of the data collected. Specifically, in the case of my application, I have concerns about the validity of this question as it is focused on the external environment while the position in question is focused on the organisationâs internal environment. This question also raises concerns regarding its validity as it appears to have more of a sales focus than an operational (specifically HR) focus. I have difficulty understanding how a list of tasks I might hypothetically have at the start and finish of a project that relates to Global Inc.âs highly specialised core business could offer any insight into my ability to perform in the position in question. Of course, I am not suggesting that HR (or any department for that matter) should adopt a silo mentality and concern itself exclusively with HR issues. In fact, I am a strong proponent of integrated HR strategies, but I do not believe that this question sufficiently addressed the requirements of the position I applied for.Â
I would also argue that a candidateâs ability to provide an appropriate or satisfactory answer to this question would require significantly more information than what is provided in the scenario (despite the fact that the interviewer did state that he only required me to consider the presented information). Presenting an action plan at a granular level necessitates significantly more intimate knowledge of the project which a) would require a more in-depth contact session or exposure to the core business and b) could be taught through on-boarding and training during a probation period. This raises concerns regarding the questionâs ability to produce reliable data that is consistent over time and across candidates. Finally, I would argue that a scenario-type question like this would be more suited to a case study environment, where the candidate is afforded sufficient time to formulate a tentative roll-out plan, and less suited to an initial telephone screening.
Question: Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years?
Second only to âwhat are your biggest weaknesses?â, this is arguably one of the worst interview questions one could possibly ask as it does not provide any tangible evidence regarding abilities, motives or values - data collected from questions such as this are essentially meaningless. Perhaps if it was followed up with probes such as âwhat steps have you taken thus far to achieve these goals?â one might argue that it could predict behavioural competencies such as tenacity, perseverance and commitment, but this was not the case here. Usually, a career trajectory is also discernible from a CV and an initial telephonic interview might be more optimally used to probe into possible gaps in the CV or to clarify aspects of the candidateâs career history that might be unclear.
Using the aforementioned question as opposed to tangible evidence of a career trajectory is also problematic in its apparent assumption that a) the candidate is able to accurately assess their own capabilities, and b) present these capabilities to the interviewer in an objective manner. This question also creates an opportunity for motivational distortion and arguably reveals more about the candidateâs perception of what the interviewer wants to hear rather than what the candidate actually wants to- or can achieve.
I thank you for your time and wish you all the best with your future endeavours.
