What is the purpose of a job interview? According to Frank L. Schmidt, a
psychologist renowned for his research in personnel selection, the value of
an interview lies in its “predictive validity”—the ability to predict future job
performance. That is an assertion few would argue with. The logical next
question then is, do job interviews predict job performance?
To answer this question, Schmidt partnered with psychologist John E.
Hunter, an expert in research methodology. To measure the predictive
relationship between interview performance and job performance, they
conducted a meta-analysis on eighty-five years of research on personnel
selection. Included in the analysis were nineteen different methods for
assessing talent. The results were sobering. At best, the methods had a
predictive validity of 54 percent. For unstructured interviews* it was 38
percent and for structured interviews it stood at 51 percent.1
Fast-forward more than two decades and little has changed. Scour the
internet for statistics on hiring and you’ll find new studies with similar
results.2 In some cases, the results are worse. A recent Gallup study found
that when it comes to management talent, companies fail to choose the right
candidate 82 percent of the time.3 While interviews aren’t the sole input
leading to these outcomes, they are a primary one. And if you include
marginal performers who do just well enough to not get fired and
candidates who didn’t interview well enough to get the job but would have
been great, then the conclusion you can draw isn’t an inspiring one.
The reason for those odds is simple. The two people who face each
other at the interview table don’t do it often enough to do it well.