The critics of the test have been unable to answer these questions. This leads to the logical conclusion that the critics of the test, including the Judges who voted against the majority SCOTUS opinion, are only interested in a political agenda, and not what is fair and certainly not what the US Constitution demands (protection of EVERYONE’S Civil Rights, even a white guy with a disability).
Did anyone find out how many hours were spent studying by the Blacks who took the test and compared that to the people who passed it? Maybe the answer to what happened is there,
OR it may be here:
http://bit.ly/ZqD2c

Using competency based questions is the best way to protect yourself against claim, from unsuccessful candidates, that the questions in the interview, no matter how innocently asked, were designed to illegally exclude them.

“However, too many companies think this can all happen without the total involvement of the executive team and every single line manager. This has been the weakest link in the chain in the past, and my prediction for the future is that it will continue to be the problem.”

… and that ladies and gentlemen is why they will continue to need us as recruiters. We DRIVE the process and help them get out of their own way!

One last comment…every hiring decision is a gut decision..the only option we have is whether our gut is fully informed or not. Accurate job data and accurate candidate data leads to a “full” gut.

Thank you for an excellent primer on the subject of BI/competency interviews. As others have implied in their comments, there really is little point in interviewing if one does not interview for competencies matching the job description.

However, I somewhat disagree somewhat with your conclusions regarding the advantages of multiple interviewers, i.e. “the outcome ceases to be an individual manager’s choice and instead becomes a consensus”. While that is true in a perfect world, or maybe even in one where all interviewers are incredibly adept and skilled in the processes involved, in the real world it is not nearly as reliable as one might think. Too often, the multiple interviewer process, especially when it involves larger groups (5+), becomes a way of shifting blame for bad hires, and diminishing the responsibility for the hiring decision, and ultimately the success of the hire, from the individual manager to the group. The “group” has far less to do with the development of the person hired than does the manager, yet the manager’s responsibility for the hire is spread across the group.

The process of involving larger numbers of people in the interview process creates a responsibility shift, and can reduce the “buy-in” of the individual manager for the new hire’s success. I understand that your group must take very specific interview notes, and use those to justify scores and recommendations, and do applaud your attention to detail. However, if an interviewer really “likes” a candidate, it is a no-brainer to come up with valid comments from the interview to support the score or recommendation. Likewise for negative recommendations.

The greater the number of interviewers, the far greater the likelihood that personality differences, gamesmanship, politics, and prejudice in many possible forms will come into play. Again, specific comments and behaviors from the interview notes are not that difficult to come up with.

If one is going to use multiple interviewers, I recommend that it never exceed four participants, and that those participants be chosen very carefully. In addition to the position manager, the group should include that person’s manager/director, an HR individual of at least supervisor standing, and a technical person, if that is appropriate. The position manager should also get 50% of the weight of the decision in their recommendation. That enforces that person’s level of responsibility, and increases their buy-in to making the hire a success. It is essential that the person who is going to be responsible for developing the skills of the new hire have the greatest influence in the decision. Otherwise, the group is laying the groundwork for apathy in the development of the candidate.

Worst case group hiring scenario??? Inviting peer-level, or subordinate-level, employees to interview the candidate. No amount of oversight is going to be able to sort out the potential personality and prejudicial issues that come to bear in that process.

Since then, two developments may interest you and ERE readers. First, we can now quantify the financial benefits that accrue from competency-based selection, even when it forms part of a multiple step hiring process. In multi-unit retail at the store manager level (where there are P&L statements attached to each performer), the average annual performance savings per hire (the increase in store profit attributable to making competency-based hiring decisions) ranges from $18K for a national convenience store chain to $22K for a coffee store chain to $30K for a chain of tire stores. And these results were audited for the first two instances. We have developed Talent Curve simulation software to detail the proportions of: Stars, Achievers, Keepers, Problems, and Mistakes (the Talent Curve) that a given existing hiring process makes, and how that will be improved after implementing competency-based hiring. Then the well established Utility Equation transforms the talent curves into the performance value per hire.

The second development concerns closing the gap between the promise of behavioral interviewing seen in the research and the reality once it gets practiced in the field. In research, most everyone asks the recommended behavioral questions, probes to re-direct candidates back on track when they stray, and takes good notes. When the doors close out in the field, I noticed in hundreds of closely observed behavioral interviews that if candidates responded with behavioral answers to the first two behavioral questions asked, the rest of the interview went smoothly and the interviewer had a solid set of performance examples to rate. If candidates managed to slip away from the first one or two behavioral questions asked, they learned from that experience that they did not need to answer the tough questions with precise answers. They could slip away, providing an opinion or a generality instead of a clear performance example. In the field, interviewers often don’t take notes or take notes that are illegible even to themselves more than a hour after the interview.

Getting the interview started online shrinks the gap. An automated online coach ALWAYS goes for specific, detailed, behavioral answers. It scans initial answer drafts for phrases that suggest a non-behavioral answer, giving the candidate a chance to reveal the behavioral detail needed to evaluate the candidate’s performance. Beyond coaching candidates to stay cleanly on the behavioral track and capturing detailed, legible notes to each question, an online behavioral interview has two other major positives. First, with the benefit of conducting 150,000 online interviews over the past 5 years, we have learned how to coax the specific answer details, a bit at a time, from candidates who would be intimidated by a simple question followed by a blank text box. Second, our online interview collects automated confirmations from credible third parties with no labor cost on the part of the employer. So this online alternative to starting competency-based interviews not only improves behavioral interviewing to make best practices more common in the field, it collects third party confirmation of the candidate’s performance claims.

It would be great if other readers to Timothy’s article and this comment added further enhancements to competency-based selection that they have come across.

I’ve seen that many organisations (surprisingly) do not apply a consistent structure like this (BI-based or not), partly due to a lack of awareness/understanding on their part. That’s why I thought a broad introduction might prove useful to individuals who want to introduce objectivity to their hiring, but are unsure how to go about doing it.

Once a recruiter knows what competencies fit the job, he or she has to test (aka interview) each applicant to determine whether the applicant has them. Behavioral interviewing is just one testing technique (i.e., BI is based on the theory if XYZ competency is required for the future job, a successful applicant should probably be able to tell stories about its successful application in past jobs).

So, I ask…if you are not interviewing (i.e., verbally testing) the applicant in the hopes of determining specific competencies for a specific job, then what exactly is the purpose of the interview?

While the above comment mentions one basic/free aspect of social sharing of job content (which is on all elements of our client sites), we assist clients with overall social recruiting strategy/architecture which helps build talent targeted pipelines, content delivery, training, and end-to-end measurement of these programs through our recruiting dashboard.

Truly enterprise strategy, versus throwing a bunch of “free stuff” online - which was suggested, and unfortunately what’s done by most employers.

A Senior Talent Acquisition Manager from a professional services firm asked “If my company’s Executives have a low view of HR/Recruiting, how do I get meetings with them?”

I think this is a great question that probably deserves a more attention than a message board and, quite frankly, from the industry. However, I will try to give everyone some suggestions:

1) The fact that this Recruitment Director understands his influencing level is the first step to fixing the problem. I speak to far too many recruitment leaders that don’t have a realistic view of their influence within their organization. Most recruitment leaders think they have more influence than the really do…
2) Approach your organization executives and discuss your long term goals. But, don’t sugarcoat your current situation. Discuss with them that you are aware that there a long term disconnect with HR/Recruiting and their business/company.
3) Ask for help. Tell your organizations executives your goals, and ask them how they would proceed if they were you.
4) Bring examples, both good and bad…Discuss with them how by working together, the company can be more successful. If you don’t have any from your current organization, look back to previous experience
6) Develop your professional and business background. Unfortunately, the recruitment industry is a narrow profession. Unlike other business areas such as IT or Finance, many of the skills you develop in recruiting or knowledge you possess is not transferable to business. In other words, read, network with other professionals outside of recruiting, or attend business conferences.
5) Use some of the tactics in my interview. Especially, the dialogue on asking key questions to your companies executives such as “How can Talent Acquisition better align with your business goals for this year?” “What metrics would do you think we can create to best measure our alignment?”

I would be very interesting in hearing everyone’s opinion on this topic. Please feel free to post here, or email me directly.

-Alan
alan@startfinder.com

The reason I’m commenting is I have a question - the articles mentions “significantly more print ads in Europe”. What’s behind that? Is there data to show print is more effective there than in the US? And/or is it more cost-effective there?

Thanks for any insights….

Extremely, glad to see what you have written here in the article. We @ JobsByRef.com had similar thoughts for quite sometime now and have actually gone in and implemented a service which takes care of pretty much most of the stuff you are talking about here. The good thing is companies are already using it and are seeing the benefits. We are very passionate about bringing a change to the recruitment industry, which has been kind of static for quite sometime now, with only marginal changes happening here and there. A unified and holistic approach is needed to bring a dramatic change to this whole process of hiring. Visit and check out the site at http://www.jobsbyref.com when you have time.

Good point regarding diversity….

I am not an expert on diversity recruiting. However, I would suggest that you handle that challenge just was you would consult your internal customers, or how you manage diversity issues for other hard to find positions. Does that answer your question?

-Alan
alan@startfinder.com