Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Ditch the Interview

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...Hiring the right person is not easy. It often seems that if the potential employee is good at interviewing he makes a lousy employee. I'm not sure why that is--perhaps this sort of person has to learn to "sell" himself with more skill than the average job applicant. So why do we approach the hiring process with such reluctance? It would seem that we just want to get it over with; that we want to cross that nasty little chore off of our list so badly that we do a terrible job of hiring the person in the first place.

In many instances, we don’t even take the time to properly vet the applicant. If she looks okay, if she says the right things, if she looks like she can get through the day without blowing something up, we hire her just to get it over with. It’s like we’re whistling right past the proverbial graveyard, hoping against hope that somehow hiring her will work out. Why do we do this when we know that our gut is screaming at us louder than it does after two bowls of five-alarm chili that we should not hire her?

Often, in retrospect, we will wonder why we hired her; looking back at our interview, we will see suddenly that she showed us everything wrong with her. If our eyes and, more importantly, our minds had been open we would have seen that she was not right for the job.

Author Seth Godin claims in a recent book that we should not waste the time it takes to interview a job applicant. He says we should forgo the interview altogether and that it's a complete waste of time. Godin argues that most of us are terrible at interviewing people and that it is a process so over done that it has become a silly and ineffectual dance designed to do nothing more than make both parties feel they have adequately filled the most critical requirement in the hiring process (my words, not Seth’s).

In other words, we hire the same people all the time: Those who are good at interviews. Actually, we tend to hire those who make us feel good while we are interviewing them; those who have figured out what we want to hear and give it to us.

What do we do to break out of this never-ending cycle? We don’t interview potential employees. It’s only an overly-rehearsed play--let's just get rid of it. The whole, “Tell me about yourself/Let me tell you a little bit about our company/Do you have any questions” act? Get rid of it all and replace it with this:

First, carefully pre-screen the candidate to make sure he has the right credentials to fit the job description for the position you're filling. And by job description I mean a real, honest-to-God, fully-holistic job description with a detailed set of deliverables you expect him to deliver. The job description should include a perfect description of the person you want to fill the job. It has to be a true blueprint of the person you want working for your company. When you have that description, and the person who best fits that description, then and only then should you have that person come in to meet you and your team.

Once she come in, instead of going through the usual interview rigmarole, sit down with her and discuss in detail your company’s story. Tell her about your company, its history, values, challenges, success stories, goals, and plans for the future. Tell her what you will expect of her and the role she will play in the future of your company.  Simply ask the job applicant if the job is something he would be interested in being a part of and why. Listen carefully because this is where you set that BS meter to super-sensitive and listen. After all this, if you still feel good about him, hire him. Hire him for one day, one week, or two weeks--no more than that for now. Hire him as a 1099, a contractor, and put him to work immediately. You watch how he does. If he does everything right, hire him permanently; if not, let him go with no questions asked.

This might sound a little irrational, but, trust me, it will work. A paid audition, which is what this is, will make sure that you are either dodging a very big bullet, or hire the right person for the job. Think about it; it’s only common sense.