A recent review of 5,000 interviews, and a follow-up of the performance of hundreds of those hires, revealed the following: the best performing candidates are not always the ones to get hired. Although this may not come as a surprise to most people, I believe there is value in reviewing a couple of the conclusions they came to on why this is.
In the absence of clearly defined performance expectations for a specific role, an interview team will usually default to focusing strictly on technical skills. Although technical skill is important, it is meaningless when it is wrapped in a lack of motivation and poor attitude. A much better interview approach would be to clearly spell out the performance expectations for the role and ask the candidate to recount instances of times he or she exhibited that performance. Hearing how a candidate tells their story will give an interviewer loads of information regarding what they can expect from that candidate.
Tip: If your interview isn’t heading in this direction, make sure to steer it that way so that your story can be heard.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Or, the most assertive, polished candidate gains the most confidence in their ability to perform. It’s only human nature to be swayed by a charismatic personality—but as this study pointed out, charisma isn’t necessarily an indicator of future performance. On the flip side of the coin, look around your workplace and you will likely find plenty of quiet, introverted developers who are some of the best performers in the company. An interviewer needs to set aside biases regarding charisma and/or introversion and dig deep for evidence of performance potential.
Tip: Once again, as an interviewee, make sure your performance stories are being heard.
Bottom line: in many cases, the interview process is flawed. The average annual cost, with overhead, for a new hire is approximately 175K for a senior-level developer. Since it will often take up to two years to settle on the fact that a candidate simply isn’t a performance match, the potential human-capital investment for a company can be upwards of a quarter of a million dollars before that candidate is let go. This is why at Stout we take our work very seriously, and why we take the time to coach both our candidates and our clients on how to best ensure a mutually beneficial hire.
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