Why One Of The Most Used Questions In Job Interviews Is Unfair And Biased
The main objective of job interviews used in personnel selection processes is to collect the maximum amount of relevant information about each candidate, but doing this in a reliable way is not as simple as it sounds.
Much of the information that interviewers must extract from the interviewee is not expressed directly by the latter, but is deduced indirectly from his behavior and what he says.
In that space of ambiguity that exists between what is expressed and what is inferred, there is a lot of room for interpretation, but also for error and, in fact, there are reasons to believe that one of the most popular job interview questions is fundamentally useless and biased as organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out.
The unfair question that should not be asked in job interviews
There is a point in job interviews, when the basic information about each candidate has already been collected, when the interviewers decide to go one step further and find out how the interviewee behaves in specific work situations that may pose a challenge.
Normally logistical limitations make it not possible pose in real time a challenge similar to the one one encounters in the job position one is applying for so we try to access this information through an indirect question.
“Explain to me what happened when, in a previous job…”
And from this approach, you can choose different variants:
“…he felt especially proud of how he dealt with a conflict.”
“… experienced a tense situation with a client, and how he resolved the situation.”
“… he came to think that he did not have the strength left to achieve all the objectives set, and what he did about it.”
Unlike other types of questions, these refer to real situations, and the answers must be in the form of a narrative with a beginning, middle and end.
The latter, together with the fact that They refer to real work situations can lead one to think that they provide truly relevant information, since in the end the important thing in a selection process is to accurately know how someone behaves in the professional field, how they achieve their objectives.
However, Adam Grant points out that these kinds of mental exercises do more harm than good to the job interview. Let’s see why.
1. It is unfair to young candidates
Grant points out that these kinds of exercises put younger candidates in a clear situation of inferiority, since although they may be very skilled and have the theoretical and practical training necessary to do the job, have not managed to accumulate a reasonable amount of notable experiences that can be explained in this phase of the interview. In the end, the habit of confusing a lack of stories with a lack of experience necessary for a position takes its toll on the selection processes.
Another drawback of this type of approach is that the mentality of the person interviewed shifts to a “recovery of memories” mode and not to one of conflict resolution in real time. This means that the information it reveals does not speak so much about what really happened but rather how it is remembered.
It must be kept in mind that decades of research in Psychology have shown that memories are always changing, it would be strange if they remained unchanged. Specifically, It is very common for memories to mix with desires and intentions of one, even if one is not aware of it. Therefore, it may be that the outlook offered by the people interviewed is much more optimistic than the event that actually occurred.
3. Verbal skills interfere
These exercises serve more to select people who are skilled at telling stories than to detect those who are more skilled at facing conflict or dealing with stress. The lack of ability and resources to explain what happened, for example, says nothing about how someone would perform in the job, and in the same way explain an interesting narrative about how a work feat was carried out in the past. It also doesn’t say much about what would actually happen if a similar problem were to appear in the present.
4. Differences between jobs matter
Another drawback is that work contexts can be very different depending on each job. If candidates are given the opportunity to recall a past work event, They may very well be talking about a very different type of organization to those who choose to go to work in the present.
According to Grant, to avoid the aforementioned drawbacks and obtain relevant information about the candidates recruiters must pose imaginary situations and ask the interviewees how they would act in the face of such challenges.
In this way, the range of situations from which each candidate starts is restricted, making the situation more fair, and at the same time they are invited to actively participate in solving a problem in real time something that will reveal important aspects about your work performance, your level of creativity, your intelligence and your predisposition to work as a team.
For example, they can be asked to think of ways to make a brand create viral content on the Internet linked to its image, without spending more than 10,000 euros, or they can be entrusted with the mission of directing an imaginary selection process, with profiles of several candidates explained and the expressed need to coordinate the process with heads of two different departments.
