ORI That is a good question. When I first saw this research, I kept trying to poke holes in it. I’m a big fan of soft skills and emotional connections. But the research we wrote about was based on 20 years of analysis of almost every psychological study done on interviews. Time and again, the research shows that interviews are poor predictors of job performance because we tend to hire people we think are similar to us rather than those who are objectively going to do a good job.

Image Rom Brafman Credit... Josyn Herce

ROM When psychologists started looking at hiring  in corporations and in the military  what they learned is that managers’ assessments are about as good as pure chance. It is difficult to admit that we’re not good at predicting future personality based on one encounter. That’s why we don’t get married after one date that goes really well.

Q. So in your eyes what makes for a good interview process?

ROM The idea is to remove from the equation anything that will sway you one way or the other. Once I talk to you and learn that you have a cat, I might get distracted by that fact and think, “I’m a cat person, she’s a cat person, we’ll get along.” But that really shouldn’t be part of the interview. The experts say we don’t even really need interviews because hiring decisions can purely be done based on well thought out written questions, a review of work samples and testing. Asking people about their strengths and weaknesses does not really give you the information to make a good hiring decision.

ORI We wanted to hire a guy to do our public relations and for the first time, I decided to try a really structured method for hiring someone. So I focused on results. Has he done the kind of work I wanted and did he do it well? I have made so many decisions based on whether I really hit it off with someone and in the end I know I was swayed by the first impression.