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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
I remember when I hired my my first person a number of years ago, and and that's what I was told is at at the end of the process, then just go with your gut. Go with who you're most comfortable with. And I'm I'm thinking, well, I'm an organizational psychologist. We tried to turn this into more of a, you know, kind of a scientific kind of thing. And then at the end of it, you're telling me just to go with my gut?
Mark Smith:I thought it was a bad idea then, and I think it's even worse idea now.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, President of Imperative Bulletproof Background Checks with Fast and Friendly Service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow rate and review Good Morning HR wherever you get podcast. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at goodmorninghr.com.
Mike Coffey:For many hiring authorities, evaluating a job candidate starts with looking at their recent job titles, making sure they have the right education, and maybe looking for an industry specific certification. And then they select the candidate that their gut tells them is the best hire. But in an age of title inflation, does job title really tell you much about what the individual's role really was or that they were even competent in that role? Or is a 15 year old degree necessarily indicative that the candidate's knowledge is up to date? And let's face it, maintaining many certifications after you received them doesn't really require that you demonstrate that you actually learned anything in all of those continuing education courses.
Mike Coffey:My guest today points to what he says is a better way to select candidates. Mark Smith is the principal consultant at A Better Choice Hire. Mark holds a PhD in industrial organization psychology and has spent his career researching and consulting with firms like Gartner and SHRM. He has presented expert testimony about skills based hiring to the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and has collaborated with the National Academy of Science on the future of work. And he is the author of the recent best selling book, A Better Choice, Managing The Manager's Guide to Skills First Hiring.
Mike Coffey:He and his wife are also accomplished ballroom dancers, and they have performed with the Virginia Ballet Company. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Mark.
Mark Smith:Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you having me, and I'm looking forward to this discussion.
Mike Coffey:Okay. I wanna start off with the total non HR part, the dancing. So you're a ballroom dancer, and I know when you say The Nutcracker yeah. I know one of the performances you did was The Nutcracker, so that means you were in the party scene at the beginning doing the the the dancing there. Right?
Mark Smith:That's right. Yeah. You're you're obviously familiar with it.
Mike Coffey:Oh, I am too familiar. My 23 year old son dances with the Norwegian National Ballet. And 10 years ago, he was The Nutcracker, and they needed adults to dance in the opening party scene. Uh-huh. And, I mean, I am I can't even play the the radio.
Mike Coffey:I have no musical ability or timing or anything, but my son was a nutcracker and they needed, you know, parents to do that. It was the hardest thing I've done in my entire life. That all that ballroom dancing. I have so much more respect for what he does and what you do, and I'm just glad that I don't fall down walking down the stairs. But it was you know?
Mike Coffey:So we've got that in common. You were successful at it, and I didn't kill me. So
Mark Smith:so fantastic. Our our group in Virginia, we've got so many dads who are engaged in the studio and happy to help. It's it's just so much fun.
Mike Coffey:It's it's fun, but, boy, is it painful when you look at, you know, I thought I was smiling throughout it, you know, because you see the photos. I think I've got this down, and I'm I've got this beautiful little 15 year old girl who I'm just my job is not to make her look stupid, and so I'm doing good. I haven't messed anything up, and I think I'm smiling all day, and I see all the photos after, and I'm like, you know, just teeth bared, just gritting through it, but I didn't make her look too bad. And now she dances with the Oklahoma City Ballet. So so she you know, because of me, she got that much better to cover my deficits.
Mike Coffey:Right?
Mark Smith:Well, fantastic. Yeah.
Mike Coffey:So talking about skills, let's talk about skills first hiring. What do you mean by the skills first part of that?
Mark Smith:Yeah. So when I talk about skills first hiring, it's really making sure that, we're evaluating candidates directly based on the skills that are relevant for the job. Which sounds pretty obvious. Right? I say that and and virtually everybody nods their head in agreement.
Mark Smith:And and so that's not contentious. It can be difficult, but everybody agrees that that's an ideal approach. But when you take it a step further and you say, well, largely college degrees are not good predictors of who will be a good job performer. And really, you know, things like years of experience, you really have to take those with a grain of salt as well. And those have been, as you say, the the real core of evaluating candidates for a number of years.
Mark Smith:Education and years of experience. And I'm saying, we can directly evaluate skills, knowledge, competencies a lot better than just looking at whether somebody has a degree and, and how many years of experience they have.
Mike Coffey:And you you use that you know, we've talked a lot about skills based hiring and use skills first hiring. And and maybe that's more branding, but I I really like the idea that we're starting from a point of competencies and ability to do that job ahead of credentials that, you know, that maybe don't have always a a direct correlation or causation to success.
Mark Smith:Yeah. No. I I agree with that. And and larger, we're talking about the same thing when we talk about skills based hiring versus skills first hiring. I think skills first is a, just better term that that more accurately describes, what we're talking about.
Mike Coffey:How long has that approach been? I mean, I I came out of healthcare HR before I started my consulting firm 25 years ago, and we were dealing with competencies then. Right? You know, that was, you know, and I think health care was one of the early industries that really developed the competencies model. And and certainly when we're bringing clinicians in, people like that, we were testing their their competencies before we ever settle Luce on patients.
Mike Coffey:But how is you know, I you know, from the 25 years ago when and when it was health care and maybe a few others, how has that evolved and where are we now, do you think in in evaluating skills as as the most, you know, the leading part of selecting candidates?
Mark Smith:Yeah. And I think the idea behind the competency based hiring and the competency focused work, it was always a good idea. The competencies themselves often got a little funny where the names got weird and very idiosyncratic by companies Mhmm. And and different sort of, like, unrelated skills and abilities and things just started to get mushed together under these sort of broad, broad terms that we called competencies. So the idea behind it I thought was a good one in practice.
Mark Smith:Things got a little impractical. I think when we talk about skills first hiring, it's taken that competency based work and improving on it, standardizing some things. But importantly, it's doing it in a way that I think is much more measurable. Because when we talk about, skills and we talk about knowledge, and we talk about abilities, which is those are, you know, the real important things that we're evaluating. A lot of those can be effectively evaluated with, psychometric assessment and other types of assessment.
Mark Smith:And so instead of having these competencies that were, that were very kind of loose frameworks of things that were all important, but I don't know that they were organized that well in a lot of cases. And in many cases, it ended up being an interview or a series of interviews that, folks really use to to measure those. With the skills first approach, I think we can do a much better job measuring the important, competencies and personality traits as well as the skills and the knowledge.
Mike Coffey:So before we get too deep into that, you mentioned college degrees earlier, and I'll just, you know, state my biases right up front is that I think probably 60% of the people that are going to college probably ought not, what it costs and what the return on investment is, and the ability to develop the skills directly in the workplace or through a certification program or something like that. But so what tell me your I mean, you know, to those of us with 15, 16, 17 year old, students out there who are marginally academically inclined, they'll do the homework, they'll do the basics, but, you know, they don't have a real passion. What's your take on where does where where do you really encourage somebody to chase a college degree versus some other kind of learning?
Mark Smith:Yeah. And, you know, college has gotten gotten a little weird in terms of the purpose that it is serving. For so many 18 year olds, it it it's the default. Well, of course, I'll go to college next. And then it's, well, what do you wanna do with your career is is the question.
Mark Smith:And and it ends up being, I'll figure that out when I'm there. Which I I it's essentially what I did. And so I I totally get it. But as you say from a return on investment perspective and and just does this make sense from a from a time, and resource? Largely, the answer is no.
Mark Smith:Now, if if you know you wanna go into a technical kind of field, you probably are gonna have to get a college degree. If you know you wanna be a doctor or a lawyer, I I don't think college degrees are going anywhere for for those folks. If you if you aren't sure or you think you wanna go into some other things, then we really need to have the discussion of is college right? And and I've been having discussions with with students because I think as as you had stated, I have a I have a daughter who's gonna be a sophomore in high school. And so we're having these discussions, you know, in terms of visiting colleges and stuff.
Mark Smith:And she's smart and I think she she's, you know, college is the appropriate place for her, but I can't run counter to to what I'm making the case for in the book, which is which is, you know, it's not it's not for everybody. It's just it's not serving students well when too many come out with 6 figures of college debt and the degree is just not a degree that that is actually gonna get them into a job that they couldn't have gotten, otherwise.
Mike Coffey:Right. There's no market demand for you know, we don't need as many English majors. I've got no problem with English majors. But, you know, there's just not that many straight writing jobs out there. And, and if and, you know, being like you you know, like we've talked about being an English an English major and having that degree doesn't mean you're a good writer either.
Mike Coffey:So, you know, it's, those commonities are, you know, there's maybe a disconnect there. What kind of employers are you seeing primarily focusing on Skills First hiring? Is this mostly employers who after 2021, just couldn't find qualified people, and so they're looking for alternatives? Or is this a bigger trend?
Mark Smith:I I I think, yes. It's the I have a hard time finding people with my traditional approach. Now I've seen some research out there about the the use of skills based or skills first hiring. And some of this research has said, oh yeah, virtually everybody's on board with it. And maybe everybody is sort of going to voice their support of it.
Mark Smith:But if you look at the job postings and and LinkedIn has has done some of this research the last few years. If you look at the job postings, what percent of them are still kind of demanding a college degree or a specific college degree? That percent has gone down, but it's it's gone down marginally. It's gone down marginally. It's gone down by, like, 2% in the last in the last couple of years, which is probably trending in the right direction.
Mark Smith:But to say that everybody's on board with this and and this is how it's gonna go. Yeah, that that's not necessarily the case. From, the organization's perspective, I think a lot of times it becomes, you know, a very kind of practical decision to use something like a college degree to screen applicants. Especially when when you talk to to companies, especially those who are hiring remote positions, So they'll put their job posting out on Indeed and and they'll list it on on Linkedin. And the 1st day they'll get 100 of applicants.
Mark Smith:And and 100 of applicants, not just random applicants but but people who, you know, have some reason to believe that they, they would like the job or be a good fit for the job. And if they leave it up for a couple of days, some of them will will easily get a 1,000 applicants. That is too many to to to deal with. And so they these companies need some way to to call that down. Okay.
Mark Smith:I can't deal with a 1,000. I can't even deal with 250. So how do I how do I get that down? And and so it becomes a real practical kinda issue.
Mike Coffey:One of the things I really liked about the book was that you focus on not just those technical skills, but also soft skills or people skills. I had Daryl Owens on the podcast a month or 2 ago where we talked about soft skills and and emotional intelligence and, you know, whether you call them people skills or, you know, soft skills, and I think they're, you know, again, the hard skills. Right. I think they're really important. Kinda give me your your your elevator pitch for why we should concern be concerned about those.
Mark Smith:Yeah. So, you know, when I when I go into companies and I'm I'm talking to folks and a lot of times we'll do a job analysis. And as part of the job analysis, I'll always ask, okay, what does it take for somebody to get fired from this job? And and I know, you know, that that type of thing is is fairly rare, but what does it take for someone to get fired from this job? And largely, it's gonna be these they don't get along with people.
Mark Smith:They're just they're they're a bad fit from a personality perspective, they don't communicate well. Almost never do you hear, oh, they they didn't they didn't have the knowledge or the skills. They didn't have the ability to learn. If that's the case, they're they're probably pushing them through through training. So when people are really a bad enough fit that they're exiting a company because of it, it's these these soft skills.
Mark Smith:And when I say soft skills, I don't mean to imply that they're, you know, unimportant or easy. In fact, they're they're the most difficult ones. And so the the real key is how to evaluate those things, when you're evaluating the candidates and not just focus on the hard skills, which are really in a lot of cases the easier things to evaluate. Mhmm.
Mike Coffey:I wanna you do a really good job in the book of moving through a process from, you know, from identifying that you need to fill this position and what this position really should look like all the way to onboarding. So if if, and so I really recommend the book for anybody in HR who's looking at revamping their process, but also those frontline managers who are interviewing and and thinking often the ones who are tasked with writing the job descriptions and conducting a lot of the interviews. So would you kind of walk through as we're you know, what those big steps are about developing a skills based hiring process?
Mark Smith:Yeah. And and I'm glad you you brought that up. I I really, when I was writing the book was really thinking of the hiring managers as I was writing this. I'm thinking, this this may be a little remedial for some HR folks. But when we're talking to hiring managers, that's where I get pushed back on certain things.
Mark Smith:And so in in the book we'll talk about, well think of the hiring process as a funnel where you've got you've got the most people at the top of it and then the things at the top of the funnel have to be designed to to deal with a relatively large volume of people. And so you want those to be as touchless as possible. And then as you go down, through the process you can have, you know, things that are more person intensive. And so, at the very top of the funnel these days, we could have, some computer assessments. And those computer assessments, as long as somebody sort of meets the some some very minimal standards, you can immediately push them through the the computer assessments.
Mark Smith:When I started in this field, you know, 20 plus years ago, we were just starting to do computer assessments and and it was very difficult to to really think of, wait, I'm just hiring 1 person. I can't do a computer assessment of a 100 at the very top of the funnel that and so naturally, the assessment was much much further down in the funnel. These days, yeah. A recruiter doesn't have to look at the resume or or consider the person at all. You can you can immediately push them through some sort of ability or skill or personality or a combination of all those, types of assessments.
Mark Smith:And and that's how I think we can really get from the a thousand people to a much more manageable number.
Mike Coffey:And I think, you know, because unfortunately, and I've said this for years, every hiring manager or a lot of the hiring managers think they've got this unique insight into the human soul and that their their gut is gonna direct them into, you know, finding the right candidate. And they've got all these weird, you know, nice to haves that they really you know, whenever I see nice to have, I know this is the thing that manager is putting at the top of their list, but they know they're not supposed to. And, you know, they've got their own their own processes. But if they really want to do a skills first type approach, I think the first thing and you say in the book is really examine what you need, do the task analysis. What does this person have to do in this role?
Mike Coffey:What I have to be able to demonstrate? Would you kind of walk through figuring that out for and, you know, taking that those tasks to the technical and soft skills that they need and kind of figuring out what do we really wanna look for in in in this position? Right.
Mark Smith:Yeah. So so that occurs, you know, often before there's even a a job opening or a job posting. And so that that's the the job analysis and a lot of times there's a job and sort of organization analysis going on. And we talked about competencies before and often that's where where competencies would would come in. But I really, whenever I I do these, I I need to start my job analysis with the tasks.
Mark Smith:The the things that this job, the person in this job is actually doing. Because largely, there's no disagreement about that. Everybody can agree. Okay. Yeah.
Mark Smith:This person is responsible to do these 10 things. And once we start getting into, okay, what does it take to do those things, which is the next step, in terms of determining the skills and the knowledge and the abilities and such. Let's start a place where everybody can agree which is, okay, the person in this job does x y and z, and and everybody agrees on that. And then we really nail those down and then then we go from there. And and and when we go from there, and then we can start talking about the skills and and the knowledge.
Mark Smith:And even there, I want to I want to attach the skills that we're talking about to the to the duties, to the task that I know are actually part of the job. And so when it comes out, oh, we need we need somebody, who has has this skill. Then you can say, okay, that that that may be perfectly appropriate. What task do they need that skill for? And then sometimes we refer to those as linkages.
Mark Smith:I need to make sure all all these things have linkages. And especially on the knowledge and the skill side, once I've identified those things with linkages, then determining the the tests and stuff, that actually becomes much much easier because we can use, what we'll call a content validation approach. I I sometimes I call it job content validation approach with the test to make sure that the skills and the knowledge on the test are actually done on the job. And and again, we can talk about linkages. So we can link the tests to the actual content of of the job.
Mark Smith:And and that becomes a maybe not a bulletproof validation approach, but a very strong validation approach that if this thing was ever challenged, you know, at least in the US, if if it was ever challenged legally, you you absolutely have a a great place to start. The the content validation approach doesn't work so well for personality assessments or for underlying abilities, which get a little further away from the job. But from a knowledge task, from a skills test perspective, that's a that's a great place to start.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning. HR is brought to you by Imperative. Bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. HR leaders are often approached by other parts of the organization with a request legitimate business purpose, but not an employment related purpose.
Mike Coffey:And because the laws regarding employment related background checks are totally different from any other kind of background check and most employment background screening companies won't even run other kinds of checks, The HR professionals think they have to say no. While for the last 25 years, Imperative has been the best source for employers who wanna make well informed hiring decisions, we also provide a variety of other due diligence background investigations for businesses. So whether your company needs to check out a potential service provider, needs help with a due diligence on an investment or acquisition, or maybe your legal department needs a litigation related background investigation, Imperative is here to help. You can learn more at imperativeinfo.com. If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been preapproved for 1 half hour of recertification credit.
Mike Coffey:To obtain the recertification information, visit goodmorninghr.com and click on research credits. Then select episode 159 and enter the keyword skills first. That's all one word, s k I l l s f I r s t. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com. And now back to my conversation with Mark Smith.
Mike Coffey:We recently had Brandon Jordan on, the podcast to talk about the effective use of behavioral assessments to identify the the candidates' behavioral styles, and I've been a big advocate. Well, actually, when I was in frontline HR in the nineties, and, you know, I was we tested some behavioral assessments back then and and couldn't find we just need, you know, the the correlations that the quality and ability to do them, especially back in pen and paper test, just weren't nearly as good as what we have now. But if for the last 15, 20 years, I've been a big advocate for them, and and I think there's a lot of value there. But I think one of the stumbling blocks a lot of employers have in evaluating those more technical skills is how do I how do I do that effectively in a productive way that doesn't take a ton of time?
Mark Smith:Yep.
Mike Coffey:So what kind of tools are out there for somebody who wants to be able to measure someone's ability to reconcile, you know, accounts, you know, you know, in a in a certain software or something like that in a technical role.
Mark Smith:Yeah. So, there are a lot of good tests that are off the shelf these days. And and in the last 5 or 10 years, there have been a lot of new companies, which which I I think of them as platform platform first testing companies. 20 years ago, all the testing companies were content first testing companies. But, you know, as we evolved and this became, you know, a technical problem with a technical solution, a lot of the the old companies that had a lot of paper tests, they just they didn't have a good technical solution.
Mark Smith:And so a lot of these newer companies, and and I work with one of them, they they have, like, engineering at their core, and they they can offer great, solutions. And and then we can we can really look at at the the test content separate from from them. So personality assessments can be very useful. And 20 years ago as you you were talking, I think both the the nature of some of the tests that were out there and the maturity of the research, were the maturity of the research, we hadn't really done many meta analysis at that point. And a lot of times, what we would find in our validation studies is, maybe there's a relationship, but it's really small if there is one.
Mark Smith:And then once once, you know, we're able to put things together in meta analysis, we could say, oh, okay. There there is a relationship. It's not a huge relationship, but there is a relationship. What what becomes interesting and I think hiring managers will often pick up on this and may not really know how to articulate it is the impact of faking on these things. So, I can measure conscientiousness and there are a number of good measures of conscientiousness.
Mark Smith:And broadly speaking, you know, what I can say, conscientiousness is important for virtually any job. You know, do you show up on time? Do you do you work hard? Are you willing to follow the rules? These types of things.
Mark Smith:They're that's important for almost any job and and personality test exists for these things that can that can measure those, fairly well. But what happens when somebody is in a situation where they're applying for the job, they know maybe they're really not very high in conscientiousness, but they want the job. And so what are they gonna do when you give them some items that they know are job related and they also know that they're not particularly high on?
Mike Coffey:They're gonna tell you what they what you they're gonna guess what you want the answer to be.
Mark Smith:Right. Because Right. And some of the times, the the guessing is is tricky. And and other times, it's, you know, I'm a hard worker and you go, that that's not a tricky one to fake. And and I've seen that item on a number of different personality assessments.
Mark Smith:So so yeah. Some of the better tests, I think, identify where people are, you know,
Mike Coffey:or are are playing with, you know, trying to, you know, to, you know, be less than sincere in their responses. But I think it also takes a certain amount of self awareness to really you know, somebody who's not high in self awareness may see themselves in a in a way that they're really not. And maybe really, you know, they're being honest. They think they're, you know, that they're a very sociable, outgoing person who, you know, and they're responding that way. And in reality, that's not who they are.
Mike Coffey:And so I think so how do you is do people you find people when they're developing these skills based kind of testing, is there a problem there with people trying to fake it or or those skills, either you've got them or you don't, and so they're harder to fake?
Mark Smith:Yeah. For for the skills, for the knowledge, and and and largely with the abilities, you don't really I You worry about people cheating those more than people faking those. And so that's where when we're talking about computer assessments, you're become more worried about, okay, do I need a proctor for this? And that's another thing that just in the past few years, proctoring, whether you're using a live sort of remote human proctor or an AI proctor, it it become much better, much much more usable, much cheaper than than it ever was before.
Mike Coffey:The system we use actually, for because we we have a pretty skills intensive hiring process because, there's no college degree that prepares you for what my analysts do all day, and we'll train them, but they've gotta have certain skill. They gotta be able to communicate in English at a pretty high level, problem solve using the Internet and other tools. And so we've built out our system in the system that we use. Also, while they're doing, especially on the narrative where I'm asking them to write and respond to prompts, it capture with fully telling them in advance, it captures an image of them, you know, every 2 seconds while they're doing that. So I can see, and I can also see if they lose if their software loses focus.
Mike Coffey:So if their if their browser window they're working on loses focus, in other words, they open another app or they go to another tab, It it it flags me to to to that issue. What other tools are there to to kind of you mentioned proctoring. Are there other tools out there that help prevent cheating on those?
Mark Smith:Well and so so more more recently has been the the AI proctoring and even a few years ago, right during COVID, you know, this came to the front for a lot of people when it when it came to, colleges and, testing. And, so professors were starting well, they couldn't have in person classes. And so then it's okay. How do I administer these exams? And then companies said, oh, we've got this AI proctoring that you can use.
Mark Smith:And if you without a human evaluating the things, a lot of times, the AI was flagging stuff that really wasn't cheating, pissed a lot of people off, probably a bad idea. Even in the last 3 or 4 years, things have improved since then. Still, you probably shouldn't outsource the proctoring entirely to AI. I think I think as as you pointed out, you can you can have them, recorded. And so then if the AI says, I think we have a problem here.
Mark Smith:You don't just immediately call somebody a cheater and throw them out. You you actually have a person look at it and say, okay, does this look like they're actually doing something, you know, untoward or or bad or anything along those lines?
Mike Coffey:So for these, I mean, do these software programs that people are accessing to measure this stuff, how much of it needs to be bespoke to that certain job and how much time does the hiring manager or HR ever have to create the inputs for the test relative to the that job versus what they can just pull off the shelf and select from a menu?
Mark Smith:When I'm thinking about the hiring process and and we talked about before the the funnel and the things at the top of the funnel, unless you're a really big company who, has a position that you're you have a ton of applicants for, it doesn't make sense to do these custom tests that you're using at the top. There are a lot of, available tests that are are similar enough to most jobs that that can do the job. The next step in the hiring process, well, there there may be a couple of things in there in terms of a realistic job preview and and some other communications with folks. But if they pass the, computer test, if they decide that they still want to, be in the hiring process, then we can get to the to the interviews. And when I talk about interviews, I I'm specifically talking about structured interviews.
Mark Smith:So we'll get to the structured interview part. And there, that's when I start really advocating the specific things that you need for the job. And and those become, you know, much much easier to to modify and tweak, in in a live way. But but again, it can't be an unstructured kind of thing. It has to be structured.
Mark Smith:And when I say structured, I mean, the different applicants get the same basic questions and the different candidates are evaluated in the same way. And so we're we have structure in terms of, the questions that are asked, and we also have structure in terms of how their responses are evaluated.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Yeah. That's I've been a big big advocate for that for a long time, and it's amazing to me still how many, you know, hiring managers, especially just go in and shoot from their hip, talk about themselves and and maybe the company Right. For 20 minutes and then give the applicant 10 minutes of of tell me about yourself and there's you come away and the applicant is ready for that, performs really well. The applicant who who wasn't ready for that approach and wanted something, you know, more structured so that you could get consistent information, They come off completely different on on on the page.
Mike Coffey:And so the structural interviews and I think the book has really good tools for for thinking through. If you go through your whole process, you've identified those. I think where a lot of people a lot of managers get too clever is during the when they're writing those structured, interview questions, they they kind of play gotcha, and they see the the interview sometimes as more of an interrogation or trying to catch the person in a lie rather than just a conversation where we can learn about each other and and have this walk away as a, you know. Right. Both of us may be knowing if this is a good fit or not.
Mark Smith:And sometimes that that is a a criticism of the structured interviews is is they can start to feel a little impersonal. And and, yeah, it can be, oh, I'm I'm looking for the things that they don't know, and and it's kind of a a gotcha thing. So it can hurt the relationship building and and stuff during the process. And and there, I think it's really important for as you're implementing this to have interviewer training. And the interviewer training is not just some broad kinda interviewer training.
Mark Smith:It it's working with interviewers specifically, and so they're they're able to follow the instructions, but they're also able to navigate the the other things in the interview besides the asking the question and evaluating the answers.
Mike Coffey:And I see a lot of often angry posts on Reddit or other social media about employers who, maybe after the interview, hopefully, at least, give candidates a fairly large, you know, 6 to 8 hour project to complete to demonstrate that they've actually got these competencies, whether it's, you know, a presentation or whatever. And often, they seem totally unrelated to whatever the candidate's role really would be. What are your thoughts on those kind of real world projects that that companies sometimes send applicants back to work on?
Mark Smith:I get it. And and some of the times, I'm I'm absolutely advocating for those types of things. But to ask an applicant to spend a lot of time is completely unfair, and I don't think companies should be in the business of doing that. But at the end of this process, you need to know not just, okay, this is my top candidate, but I think companies should also be able to articulate why. And so, why is this person the best candidate for us?
Mark Smith:Why are they the most qualified candidate for us? And when I say most qualified, I mean, the person who is the highest likelihood of succeeding in this job. So and you brought up, you know, the the whole notion of go with your gut earlier. And I remember when I hired my my first person a number of years ago, and and that's what I was told is at the end of the process, then just go with your gut. Go with who you're most comfortable with.
Mark Smith:And I'm I'm thinking, well, I'm an organizational psychologist. We tried to turn this into more of a, you know, kind of a scientific kind of thing. And then at the end of it, you're telling me just to go with my gut. Mhmm. I thought it was a bad idea then, and I think it's even worse idea now.
Mark Smith:Don't just go with your gut. You need to be able to articulate why. And some of the times at the end of the interview, it becomes clear. Okay. I interviewed 5 people.
Mark Smith:There there is one person. And I think at that point, you go make that offer. And then there are other times where I there are there are 3 people and, you know, in the hiring manager's eyes, they're they're tied. And sometimes we'll we'll talk and, you know, you can you can talk them through. Let's evaluate these people and and maybe they can, maybe there is a best person and they just needed somebody to bounce some ideas off of.
Mark Smith:But, some of the times I recommend, a role play assessment. But when I say a role play assessment, it can't be this onerous time consuming process for the candidate. They've already probably gone through the process, which is weeks, probably a month in in a lot of cases, and they've done they've probably done well in the in the interviews. You just have 2 people at that point, and you need to be able to to say, I'm gonna hire this person and not that person and why. And and so for me, that becomes I need more information.
Mark Smith:It it's there I I don't have enough information at that point. So, one of the things I've started doing is is helping companies at that stage in the process too. At the very end stage when they've got 2 or 3 people, and and they just need more information. And I say, we could run them through a quick role play that is, you know, interesting and provocative enough to, in all likelihood, differentiate between the people. But we'll take an hour or less of the candidate's time.
Mark Smith:So we're not taking advantage of them because there, in that case, there is one group that has power, which is the hiring organization and one group that is, you know, kind of subservient. And and you can't take, you can't take advantage of the candidates like that.
Mike Coffey:I mean, I think increasingly candidates aren't willing to. I mean, it's, you know, they'll just they'll move on, you know, move on. We still got fairly low unemployment right now, and, they'll just find the next the next row. I there's so much more in the book. You talk about cultural fit, you talk about onboarding, and so I really do recommend that everybody go get a copy of A Better Choice.
Mike Coffey:I'll we'll share the links to to get it in in the show notes, but that's all the time we have today. Thanks for joining me, Mark.
Mark Smith:Thanks, Mike.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. And don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcast. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at robmakespods.com. And thank you to Mary Anne Hernandez, imperatives marketing coordinator, who keeps the trains running on time.
Mike Coffey:And I'm Mike Coffey. As always, don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week, and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.