Personal bias clouds interviewing and hiring

8
OPINION
Lehigh Valley Business
June 29, 2015
LVB.com
Personal bias clouds interviewing and hiring
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
— Walt Kelly, author of the comic strip Pogo.
When it comes to interviewing, most of
us stink.
Despite billions of dollars invested in finding
more accurate ways to assess
talent, managers continue to
be stumped. The situation is
so bad that many companies
are willing to accept mediocrity as the norm.
That doesn’t mean management ignores the probIra. S.
lem. Valiant (and expensive
Wolfe
investments) to improve the
process are noble but misleading. Better questions, structured formats
and even training help improve the process but
results still fall short.
One fatal flaw remains, and few companies
seem willing to address it. The enemy is “us!”
The inherent vulnerabilities of the
interview as the cornerstone of any selection
process are old news. Even the structured
behavioral interview provides only minimal
improvement, given its variables: the
interviewing skills of the manager, the savvy of
the candidate and the interview questions that
are asked.
Once and for all, new research seems to put
to rest why the job interview — the one big
constant in the hiring process — is imprecise
and defective. If a company is serious about
identifying potential and evaluating future
TAKING STOCK:
performance, it must address and fix the
interview.
OVERRATING OURSELVES
Efforts long have been underway to improve
hiring managers’ interviewing skills.
Most of us want to believe that people are
the most reliable raters of others’ performance,
potential and competence. That’s not reality.
“People are horrible at predicting the future,”
Tom Rauzi, director of global talent at Dell Inc.,
recently told The Wall Street Journal.
hired and evaluated potential and future performance, isn’t it?
Well, those companies would be wrong.
Our ability to predict potential and assess
performance is under intense scrutiny, and
rightfully so. Personal bias is the enemy.
Most employers currently rely on managers’
judgment and gut instinct to determine who
gets hired or placed on the high-potential track.
When they interview and evaluate, they
want to look into the mirror and see a reflection of themselves. But multiple surveys reveal
Our ability to predict potential and assess performance
is under intense scrutiny, and rightfully so.
Asking better questions is often the first
bandage that companies apply to an ailing
selection process. Preparing structured jobinterview question guides is an easy fix but they
don’t help expose the well-coached-but-underskilled-candidate or remove doubt created
when a high-potential, competent candidate
happens to interview poorly.
PERSONAL BIAS
Companies invest time and money in
training managers and recruiters, believing
they can become better observers and listeners,
and learn which questions to ask … and which
to avoid.
After all, the interview is how we’ve always
that only half of the candidates work out.
Even a trained and experienced manager’s
evaluation of another’s performance is tainted
with some personal bias.
DRIVEN BY WHO WE ARE
This inability to fairly and objectively rate
others is known as the Idiosyncratic Rater
Effect. It affects reliability by injecting a hiring
manager’s beliefs and idiosyncrasies into the
process, thereby canceling his or her ability to
evaluate actual skills related to job performance.
Our people-performance decisions are
driven by who we are, not by who the candidate
is, which makes us poor evaluators of job fit
and potential.
Research reveals that 61 percent of our rating of another reflects more of ourselves than
the other, since we base our rating on how
much of a particular skill/value/behavior we
think we have.
It’s like trying to hit the bull’s-eye with one
eye closed in a deep fog.
HELP FROM RESEARCH
Hiring mistakes are costly, and companies are figuring that out. The research only
confirms our inability to accurately and fairly
assess candidate potential and employee performance.
At the same time, the research offers hope.
Many companies now use pre-employment
tests for selection, and personality/competency
assessments for development. These tests inject
objectivity into existing but flawed talent-management practices by reducing bias and adding
numerous data points to support making the
best talent decision possible.
While no one instrument (which includes
the resume and interview) should be used as
a predictor or evaluator of performance or
potential, pre-employment and career testing
have been proven to provide the cleanest,
unbiased view.
Ira S. Wolfe is president of Success Performance
Solutions (www.successperformancesolutions.
com), experts in hiring solutions for small
businesses. A master certified consultant in
motivation, he can be reached at iwolfe@supersolutions.com or 484-373-4300.
Opt for the immediate annuity and reverse mortgage
Dear Mr. Berko: I’m 69, and my wife is 77.
We have no debts and no children. When we
married 51 years ago, we decided children are
a waste of time, energy and money. After 37
years of working with the
same firm, I’m quitting.
I don’t know how I lasted
that long, because the company and its owners are not
nice to work for. But I have
$317,000 to roll over from
my 401k to an individual
retirement account.
Malcolm
Berko
A broker we met recommends a list of high-yield
stocks paying 12 to 18 percent. Another adviser, who counsels retiring employees, says that
the safest and best investment would be an
annuity that right away would pay us $1,479 a
month, or $17,748 annually, till both of us die.
He calls this an immediate annuity because it
would begin paying us immediately.
This 401k is the only asset we have besides
our Social Security and our big house, which
is worth $225,000. We’re thinking of selling
our big home and buying a smaller townhouse for $116,000. After paying moving
costs, we would have about $100,000 remaining. We’d invest $60,000 of that cash in those
12-18 percent stocks, giving us $7,000 to
$9,000 annually, and keep $40,000 for emergency cash. My wife and I get $28,000 annually from Social Security.
If we could get nearly $18,000 from an
annuity plus $7,000 to $9,000 from stocks,
that would be the cat’s meow. We need at least
$55,000 a year to live on. Any help you could
give us would be great. – SA, Indianapolis
Those are some of the nation’s top insurers.
I suggest that you review several of them
and take the highest rate that’s offered. Before
signing the papers, you might wish to first
check with me.
Dear SA: Imagine a man who dies without
children at the end of a million years of evolution. His ancestors lived through the ages,
fished, hunted saber-toothed tigers and woolly
mammoths – and it all ends here in a puddle
of blood.
His whole lineage and whatever potential his
progeny might have had in the centuries ahead
are gone. How sad and incomplete!
NUMBERS DON’T ADD UP
Getting a safe 12 to 18 percent dependable
income would be purrfect but impossible, even
with highly regarded speculative issues such as
Mesabi Trust, Portugal Telecom, TICC Capital,
LinnCo, Northern Tier Energy, Calumet
Specialty Products Partners or Dominion
Resources.
Broker No. 1 knows his high-income stocks,
but he should also know that these would not
be suitable issues for you.
This Neanderthal is dangerous to society,
and if he were to take a long walk off a high
Alp, Indianapolis would be a safer place for
investors.
An immediate annuity is actually a great
idea; however, the idiot who’s counseling you
should go back to annuity school or return to
his previous job selling recycled cardiac stents.
There are good annuities and bad annuities,
and this isn’t a good one. It’s a high-commission
REVERSE ANNUITY MORTGAGE
In this case, the bank
would send you a monthly
check, which I guesstimate
would be somewhere in the
neighborhood of $800 to
$1,100 a month …
(10 percent) piece of garbage and poorly rated.
HIGH-QUALITY IMMEDIATE ANNUITY
Given your age and stage, a high-quality
immediate annuity would give you two a guaranteed lifetime income of $22,000 to $26,000 a year.
Look for such names as Pacific Life, John
Hancock, Sun Life Financial, Northwestern
Mutual, Protective Life, Thrivent Financial, AXA
Equitable, New York Life and Jackson National.
You don’t have to sell your big house.
Consider keeping your house and taking out
a reverse-annuity mortgage, or RAM. In this
case, the bank would send you a monthly
check, which I guesstimate would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 to $1,100 a
month for the next 827 years or till you’ve both
passed, whichever comes first.
The precise amount you would get depends
on the value of your home and your ages, but
that monthly check would be tax-free. And you
wouldn’t have any liability if your home were to
crash in value or be worth enormously less than
what you have received.
RAMs are ideal for many retirees, and AARP
has some excellent, easy-to-understand reading
material that you can ask for.
Florida-based Malcolm Berko regularly dispenses financial advice. You may address questions to him at P.O. Box 8303, Largo, FL 33775
or by email at mjberko@yahoo.com. Creators
Syndicate Inc.
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