Set responses can lead to hiring party slip ups during the interview

Even when applicants haven’t memorized answers to structured interview questions, many managers (even those trained or with many years experience) unwittingly or subconsciously give applicants help during the interview by asking leading questions. This is especially true with questions where suggested responses are available (e.g., most behavioural and competency interviews). In this case, managers use the suggested responses as a checklist and ask applicants if they have experience with any of the missing points. Applicants almost always say, "Yes, I can do that", "Yes, I’d love to do that," and " Yes, I have lots of experience doing that including ..." and nothing more is said. The end result is an elevated score for applicants and this increases their chances of being hired. And if they are, the manager is often disappointed and wonders why the new employees don’t meet expectations. Yet these managers know they made the selection decision to hire these individuals and therefore, will reluctantly try to "make do" with them, saying nothing.

A similar problem occurs when managers deviate from the structured interview process. Maybe these managers have favourite questions they want to ask, maybe they think they have a knack for finding a top performer using "gut feel", perhaps they don’t feel comfortable with or are unsure about using behavioural or competency interviews and perhaps they just feel that the questions and answers aren’t giving them a clear picture of how well each applicant will perform on the job. Whatever the reason, individual managers at many organizations still use unstructured interviews even though their HR departments have officially adopted behavioural or competency interviews for the organization.

Previous work experience is not the best indicator of performance on the new job

Another emerging problem with structured behavioural or competency interviews is that they often evaluate applicants based on previous work experience, as opposed to each applicant’s ability to apply their knowledge and experience to the performance required on the new job. And since applicants can self-select any situation or scenario when they answer a structured or competency question, they wisely select answers that put them in the best possible light. This is akin to the days of unstructured interviews when applicants learned to answer the question, "What are your weaknesses?" with a list of perceived strengths in disguise ("Oh, I’m a workaholic, a stickler for detail, etc."). A bigger problem is when a false negative occurs. This happens more often than you think because applicants are free to choose one or two examples that seem to best demonstrate their abilities (from many possible examples and experiences). The problem is that applicants have to make their choice without knowing exactly what the manager was looking for and this means a true top performer can be mistakenly screened out the competition.

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