Having spent over thirty years consulting with a range of public service agencies throughout Australia, I often encountered the conviction that hiring decisions “must be objective“.
The purpose of this paper is to examine attempts to reach this objective and comment on the problems of doing so.
The dictionary defines objective as “Decisions that are not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased.”
Techniques Often Used by the Public Service
Objective tests of ability
These are the very best tools to reach the goal of being objective.
Let’s take tests of reading and numeracy or a typing test. If scores have been proven to distinguish a high from a low performer, and if they are given in a standardized manner, this is truly an objective measure.
Clearly, someone who scores at the 25th percentile is less competitive than someone who scores at the 90th percentile.
Caution is still required. Is the difference between the 89th and 90th percentile really going to distinguish between performers? Probably not.
Interviews and Their Limitations
Assume that your area is going to spend a substantial amount of money on a new software program. Who would you like to have on the committee making the decision?
Clearly, you would like someone who is an expert in software. You would need someone who is trained to spot weaknesses and strengths to differentiate the products offered by various vendors.
While a small percentage of public service have received intensive training in making hiring decisions, the majority haven’t.
The problem is that every candidate comes to the interview wearing a mask. There are there to sell themselves. They will generally be skilled at highlighting their strengths and hiding anything they think would make them unsuitable.
Being “a good judge of character” does not give the interviewer the skills to know exactly what questions to ask, or how to interpret the answers.
Check out: The Hidden Costs of a Hiring Mistake
Unstructured Interviews
I have witnessed numerous cases of unstructured interviews which could best be described as “a casual chat to get a feel for the person“. On this basis, a hiring decision was made.
Although I have no objective data on this, the impression I gained over many years is that this was more common than otherwise.
Fifty years of psychological research have shown that unstructured interviews are an extremely poor predictor of job performance.
Scoring Each Answer
Our firm was approached by a new client in the public service. One of their offices was handicapped by tremendous tension between two factions among the staff. Lack of cooperation and active undermining of the manager were common.
Two people had been hired to run the office, each of whom lasted less than one year. They asked how we would approach the problem of selecting the next manager.
We presented them with a proposed methodology. The first question they asked is whether we would score each question that we posed. We said no and explained our reasoning.
This was greeted with a sigh of relief. Naturally, I asked what they had done in the past.
They explained that they were required to score each question. I then asked what they did if the candidate they preferred didn’t have a higher score. They calmly explained, “We would just go back and change the scores!”
At first glance, scoring each answer lends the appearance of objectivity to the process. This approach has numerous problems built into it.
The quality of the questions is open to question. Often they have little ability to penetrate the mask to get to see the real person.
There are no predetermined, research-based criteria for scoring the answer. Each evaluator makes a judgement of what constitutes a good or bad answer. No one knows the degree of accuracy of these opinions.
Beginning With The Wrong Question
When a vacancy occurs, the most common questions that emerge are “How are we going to fill this vacancy?” or “Who do we know who is available?“. If there is a pool of applicants who have been retrenched from other jobs, there may be an expectation to search that pool first.
All of these are useful questions. There is however a much more important question that should be the starting point for every recruitment exercise. The question should be “What will the impact be on us if we choose the wrong person?” That question is designed to sharpen everyone’s awareness of the importance of getting it right the first time.
Conclusion
The answer to the question of whether the public service hiring process is objective is this: yes, no and possibly.
Objective testing of skills is the best way of narrowing a large group of applicants down to a workable number. It isn’t nearly enough to make a hiring decision.
The approach to interviews is, for the most part, unreliable and lacking any objective basis.
Every hiring decision is ultimately one made by people. Each brings its own degree of bias to the exercise. The very fact of making a hiring decision has repeatedly been shown to be handicapped by multiple forms of bias, making the task that much more difficult.
Things can be dramatically improved with proper training of staff who are charged with making these decisions. Considerable research has proven that such an investment would lead to enormous savings, both in human resource and financial terms.
Dr Byrne has been a Corporate Psychologist for over forty years. He is the author of “Seeing Behind the Job Applicants Mask: Secrets of a Corporate Psychologist” available from Amazon