Welcome to The Debate. Today, we are walking
into a room that, well, almost everyone listening
has entered at some point. It's a room of high
stakes, sweaty palms, and carefully rehearsed
answers. I am speaking, of course, about the
job interview. It's the ubiquitous gatekeeper
of employment, a ritual practiced globally from
a casual coffee shop chat to a grueling multi
-stage corporate interrogation. Ritual is the
perfect word for it. Yeah, it's something we
do because we've always done it, not, you know,
necessarily because it works. We just assume
that sitting two people in a room for an hour
somehow reveals who is best for a job. But I'm
here to argue that what we're actually watching
is not a scientific assessment. It's a piece
of performative theater. And that is the central
tension we're unpacking today. Is the job interview
a reliable, valid tool for identifying the best
candidate, a predictor of future success? Or
is it, as you suggest, a flawed social game that
rewards the best actor rather than the best worker?
I think, you know, I'm leaning heavily toward
social game. I mean, I'll argue that the interview
process is fundamentally compromised by human
bias, the candidate's ability to, you know, fake
their way through. And a system that, quite disturbingly,
inadvertently rewards some pretty dark personality
traits. I see the flaws, certainly, but I'm going
to take the side of the defense here. I'll argue
that when we stop just chatting and start using
a properly structured process, one grounded in
industrial psychology, the interview becomes
one of the most accurate predictors of employee
success we have. It's not the tool that's broken,
it's how most people are using it. Ah, the classic
defense. It works in the lab. But let's see if
it holds up in the real world. Why don't you
lay out the case for the defense of the interview?
Gladly. My position is rooted in the hard data
of predictive validity. You are absolutely correct
that unstructured chats where a manager just
asks, so tell me about yourself, are, well, statistically
useless. However, the structured interview is
a scientifically validated instrument. When we
look at meta -analytic results, these are studies
of studies, we see that structured interviews
have validity coefficients ranging from about
0 .20 to 0 .57. Okay, hold on. For the listeners
who aren't statisticians, can we translate that?
What does a 0 .57 actually mean in this context?
Right, good question. It's a correlation between
the interview score and actual job performance
later on. And to put 0 .57 in perspective, that
is comparable to cognitive ability tests, IQ
tests, which are traditionally seen as the gold
standard in hiring. It's significantly higher
than, say, reference checks or just years of
experience. But the key is what we are measuring.
We aren't asking, what kind of animal would you
be? We're assessing person job fit. We are measuring
specific KSAOs. KSAOs? Knowledge, skills, abilities,
and other attributes. We break the job down into
these core elements. We aren't guessing, we're
using critical incidents. We look at past employees
in that role, identify specific behaviors that
led to success or failure, and then we build
questions around that. It turns a gut feeling
into a data point. That all sounds incredibly
tidy, but I look at the reality of the process
and I see a minefield of measurement error. The
vast, vast majority of interviews are not structured
like that. Managers rely on intuition. And intuition
is often just a fancy word for, I like this person
because they remind me of myself. I will concede
that the unstructured interview is the Wild West.
It's worse than the Wild West. It's a hallucination
of competence. Research shows that interviewers
suffer from this massive overconfidence. They
believe they're human lie detectors. They think
they can judge character in 45 minutes. But the
data shows they fail repeatedly to identify optimal
candidates. What the interview primarily measures
isn't job fit. It measures interviewee performance.
We're testing social effectiveness skills, things
like impression management, self -monitoring,
relational control. We are hiring the person
who controls the flow of conversation, not the
person who could actually code the software or
manage the P &L. But isn't social skill relevant?
I mean, if you can't communicate in an interview,
how can you communicate with a client? For a
sales role? Sure, maybe. For a data analyst,
probably not. But the failure of measurement
goes even deeper. We have to talk about the self
-fulfilling prophecy effect. An interviewer looks
at a resume or a LinkedIn profile before the
candidate even walks in. They form a snapshot
judgment. If that impression is positive, they
subconsciously treat the applicant with warmth.
They smile, they nod, you know. That makes the
applicant relax and perform better. If the impression
is negative, the interviewer is cold, the applicant
gets anxious, and they bomb. The interview doesn't
measure the candidate, it validates the interviewer's
pre -existing belief. You are touching on the
heart of the debate here. The illusion of structure
versus the reality of bias. Let's dig deeper
into this. You claim that bias prevents accurate
measurement. I'm not convinced by that. because
the entire field of industrial organizational
psychology has spent decades developing tools
specifically to mitigate that bias through structure.
You keep using that word structure, but what
does it actually look like? Because in my experience,
structure is often just a checklist that a hiring
manager completely ignores the moment they feel
a... spark with a candidate. Elements of structure
identified in the research. It means asking the
exact same questions of all applicants in the
same order. It means no prompting. You don't
help the candidate who is struggling. And crucially,
it involves evaluation structure. You don't just
say, I liked her at the end. You rate each answer
individually using anchored rating scales, specifically
bars. Bars? Behaviorally anchored rating scales.
So instead of a 1 to 5 scale based on a feeling,
a 5 is defined by a specific behavior. For example,
candidate described a conflict resolution strategy
involving active listening and compromise. A
1 is candidate suggested avoiding the conflict.
It forces the interviewer to grade the evidence,
not the vibe. That is the ideal, I agree. But
even with bars and panels, you're still introducing
human raters, and humans are just plagued by
job -irrelevant interviewer biases. Let's just
talk about the attractiveness bias. It is well
documented that physically attractive people
are judged more favorably on job -related factors,
even when their looks have absolutely nothing
to do with the job. We just assume good -looking
people are smarter, healthier, and more competent.
Can a rating scale really turn off that biological
switch? It doesn't turn it off, but it dilutes
it. Structured interviews with multiple raters,
panel interviews, have been shown to reach inter
-rater reliability levels of 0 .75 or above.
When you have three people scoring based on strict
criteria, the individual bias of one person tends
to, you know, wash out. I'm sorry, but I just
don't buy that structure eliminates these deep
-seated signals. Consider vocal attractiveness.
We judge people based on pitch, speech rate,
and loudness. A certain mix of speech rate, loudness,
and pitch predicts ratings. If someone has a
good voice, deep, resonant, confident, we assume
they're a leader. If they speak slowly or have
a vocal fry, we dock them points. We're measuring
acoustics, not aptitude. So you're arguing that
we are biologically wired to hire the alpha?
Essentially, yes. And it's not just biology,
it's sociology. We have to discuss the Bertrand
and Mullinathan study. This is the famous resume
audit. They found that applicants with white
-sounding names got 50 % more callbacks than
those with African -American -sounding names
with the exact same resume. This error starts
before the interview even happens, but it absolutely
bleeds into the room. If you walk in with a certain
name or an accent, the interviewer's intuition
is already primed against you. That study is
a powerful indictment of the screening phase,
absolutely. But strangely enough, it actually
supports my argument for structure. The solution
to name bias or accent bias isn't to get rid
of interviews. It's to make them more robotic.
Research shows that when interviewers are trained
and forced to score specific competencies, the
influence of race and gender diminishes. The
problem isn't the tool. It's the misuse of the
tool. But here is the irony. Interviewers hate
structure. They resist it. They prefer unstructured
formats because it allows them to feel autonomous.
They want to trust their gut. So you have a tool
that works, structure, but the users, the hiring
managers, refuse to use it properly because it
feels impersonal. They want the theater. That's
a fair critique of human nature, but not of the
science. If organizations want predictive power,
they have to enforce the discipline. But I want
to pivot to your earlier point about performative
theater. You suggested that candidates are just
acting. Exactly. And we need to talk about faking
and the darker side of personality. Well, I acknowledge
that impression management, or IM, occurs. But
we need to distinguish between honest IM, which
is self -promotion of true skills, and deceptive
IM. If I tell you I'm a hard worker and I actually
am, that's impression management, but it's also
the truth. That's a valid distinction for a normal
candidate. But have you considered that the interview
format is practically designed to be exploited
by the dark triad of personality? I'm talking
about narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy.
You think they have a structural advantage in
an interview? A massive one. Let's look at narcissism.
Narcissists are skilled at glorying. They're
comfortable taking credit, boasting, dominating
the room. In a short, 30 -minute interaction,
a narcissist looks like a high -potential leader.
They create a fantastic first impression because
they're often better dressed, more charming,
and they exhibit these self -assured body movements.
They mask their inability to perform long -term
with short -term charisma. That is a risk, but
that's why we use past behavioral questions.
If I ask a narcissist, tell me about a time you
failed. Their inability to accept fault usually
reveals itself. The STAR technique, situation,
task, action, result, forces candidates to be
specific. It is much harder to fake a detailed
past event than it is to fake a hypothetical
situational question like, what would you do
if? Harder, perhaps, but not impossible for a
Machiavellian. I mean, these individuals are
manipulative by nature. They can fabricate a
star response that sounds perfect. And then there
are the corporate psychopaths. They display this
superficial charm and high energy. They're thrill
-seeking. And in an interview, that thrill -seeking
is often mistaken for entrepreneurial spirit
or high motivation. The interviewer thinks, wow,
this person is a go -getter, when in reality,
they're just impulsive and irresponsible. That
is a terrifying prospect, I admit. You're saying
we are selecting for toxicity because it looks
like confidence. Precisely. One study found that
80 % of participants lied about job -related
skills in an interview. 80%. If the majority
of people are lying and the people listening
are overconfident in their ability to detect
those lies, we aren't conducting an assessment.
We are attending a fiction writing workshop.
But we aren't just looking for skills or facts.
We are trying to find fit. And this leads us
to another crucial aspect, anxiety and technology.
We are looking for person -organization fit.
Fit. That is one of the most dangerous words
in hiring. Why do you say that? It's standard
practice to ensure someone aligns with the company's
values. Because fit is often just a euphemism
for ingratiation. Research shows that the more
an applicant sucks up, compliments the organization,
agrees with the interviewer, the higher their
fit score. It rewards sycophancy, not alignment.
It rewards people who know how to play the game.
I would frame it differently. Fit measures whether
a candidate shares the core values of the organization.
Structured interviews allow for a dual assessment,
determining if they have the KSAOs and if they
align with the culture. And with modern technology,
we can expand the pool. Media richness theory
suggests face -to -face is best for data gathering,
but video and phone interviews allow us to screen
more diverse candidates from further away. But
technology is actually making the bias problem
worse, specifically when it comes to interview
anxiety. Anxiety is a natural reaction, though.
Everyone gets nervous. But it is a barrier that
penalizes specific groups unfairly. Research
identifies low assertiveness and slow speech
rate as key indicators of anxiety. If a candidate
speaks slowly because they're thoughtful or maybe
because of a cultural difference, they are perceived
as anxious and less competent. Anxiety does not
correlate with job performance for many roles.
Think of a software engineer or an accountant.
Yet it absolutely destroys interview performance.
That's true. If the job doesn't require public
speaking, we shouldn't be testing for it. And
now add video interviews to the mix. Video is
perceived as less personable and less fair by
applicants. If there is a lag, you know, poor
latency in the connection, it causes misinterpretation
of nonverbal cues. A pause might look like hesitation
or stupidity when it's actually just bad Wi -Fi.
We are literally judging people on their internet
connection speed, not their competence. I see
the validity in the technical concerns. Media
richness theory does support the idea that face
-to -face is superior because it carries more
data. Verbal and nonverbal cues are read in the
moment. However, we can't ignore that technology
enables us to recruit from a much wider geographic
area, which can actually increase diversity.
It increases the pull, sure, but it degrades
the quality of the interaction. You mentioned
person -organization fit earlier. In the video
interview, it is much harder for a candidate
to assess the company culture. It becomes a one
-way interrogation rather than a two -way exchange.
So to summarize where we stand. I'm not denying
that the human element introduces noise, but
my position remains that the structured interview
is the most practical tool we have for assessing
complex human traits. You can't measure conscientiousness
or agreeableness or communication skills with
a paper test alone. When we use behavioral questions
based on critical incidents, on real job requirements,
we achieve high predictive validity. We just
need to ensure interviewers are trained to ignore
the noise of appearance and vocal pitch. And
I maintain that the interview is fundamentally
a social game, where the best actors, not necessarily
the best workers, win. The process is plagued
by construct bias and method bias, particularly
across cultures. When we rely on intuition and
face -to -face charm, we open the door to narcissists
and corporate psychopaths. We're using a tool
that feels good, but, you know, it often fails
to deliver the truth. It seems we have a tension
between the ideal of a standardized assessment
and the reality of human social interaction.
Precisely. The science says one thing, but the
practice says another. And perhaps the answer
lies in being aware of both, understanding the
power of the tool, but also respecting its limitations.
And maybe, just maybe, being a little more skeptical
of the person who charms the pants off you in
the first five minutes. That is always good advice.
Thank you for listening to The Debate. Whether
you are the one hiring or the one hoping to be
hired, we hope this gives you a new lens on that
time -honored ritual. Good luck out there. You're
going to need it. Until next time.