80 per cent of managers 'do not receive interview training'
New research has found that 80 per cent of managers do not get formal interview training before they conduct their first employee interview.
The study by RecruitSure.com also found that 34 per cent of interviewees have been asked an illegal question at an interview in the last 12 months, which could mean that over a third of employers could be at risk of discriminating.
Joe McDermott, chief executive officer of RecruitSure.com believes that the findings demonstrate how employers' interview skills are being neglected.
He said: "By unwittingly asking illegal questions such as a candidate's age or about their beliefs, race or sexuality, employers are putting themselves in a very difficult situation which could result in legal action taken against them."
Mr McDermott added that management skills need to improve and it is vital that employers invest in interview skills training.
According to president of Resume Solutions Surranna Sandy, if a job candidate is asked an illegal question they should respond in a manner that is most comfortable to them.
However, they need to be "clear, concise and succinct with the aim to get the conversation back to questions related to your core capabilities and experiences".
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This is another of those "alarming" statistics about the current lack of depth in the UK plc's managers.
How can companies hope to recruit the right staff with the right skills for the right reasons if an astonishing 80% of the recruiting managers have had no kind of formal training? Before it's suggested, sitting on a recruitment panel with an experienced interviewer is no substitute.
I sat with my Dad whilst he taught me to drive based on his 30+ years of experience behind the wheel and then the driving instructor untaught and retaught me!
No disrespect to my Dad, he was doing it with the very best of intentions and I'm sure there were occasions where his advice and experience was invaluable but you need to get the fundamentals right.
If you get the fundamentals right, the 34% who are asking "illegal" questions may then have avoided making this, potentially costly, mistake.
HR and employment laws are constantly changing, perhaps regular training for managers on the changes in these important laws is required to ensure organisations stay on the right side of the law and avoid discriminatory behaviour?
I also think this is terrible news. I had very rigorous interview training with my previous companies and I would have hoped this was a key toolbox skill to be taught and learnt. Interestingly the first time today's graduates may get an interview is via the phone prior to reaching more detailed interviews/assessment centre. I wonder if today's potential interviewers are also learning how to discern over the phone?
I would be interested to see how many organisations use some kind of assessment as part of their recruitment process and then how many or those using things like psychometric testing actually understand or have a qualified practitioner evaluating the results as part of the process.
There is the danger, and I suspect some organisations have fallen into this trap, of thinking that you can use these tools without proper training.
If 80% have had no training on interviewing, I would imagine the number of people who understand the assessment tools being utilised will be even lower.
Hi Colin,
Re your first comment - my first management role saw me need to recruit several people for my team. I asked what I was supposed to do and the response from my manager was - uou know waht to do! I had never recruited before or been involved in it and had only worked for one compnay so hardly had interview experience myself.
He reluctantly agreed to help and told me to line up a load of candidates and we would do some joint interviews - I would watch him and then do it myself.
We had some people in, he asked questions and at the end I was none the wiser - I asked him what he was looking for - he couldn't actually tell me!
That's when I realised that a lot of managers didn't really know, or couldn't explain, what it was all about and a lot of them just worked on gut feel and turnover!
I went off and learned properly using OU courses and other help and, in due course, ran programmes for other managers on how to recruit the right people.
I am afrais that I doubt my experience is unique!
I've been very fortunate in that, whilst with Central Scotland Police, I was given the opportunity to attend a structured course on Selection Interviewing. It was invaluable and, once completing the course, a lot of things made more sense.
Unfortunately, I think my experience is fairly unique - particularly outside of the Scottish Police Service.
I once interviewed with a guy who had a list of buzzwords. If the candidate said the correct buzzword, he ticked it off. The candidate with the most ticks won the dubious prize of coming to work with this organisation.
Unfortunately, if you said the same thing with a different word or phrase, no tick. Ridiculous way to approach selection interviewing and I think there's more than a hint of the "halo" affect in there - seeking someone who will use similar language to himself rather than looking for someone who can, based on previous evidence of competencies being present, can do a good job for the organisation.
I wonder what would have happened if a candidate had asked to get access to the interview notes - there were no notes, only a long string of buzzwords. If I remember correctly, the candidate is entitled to view that information on request.
In the extreme, I could have walked into that interview, made no coherent sense but bombarded him with as many buzzwords as I could memorize and have been the successful candidate without actually structuring a solitary sentence!
When I go to interviews now, I have to admit, I can usually guess whether the interviewers have any sense of what they're trying to achieve and how they intend achieving it.
The only thing structured interviewing may miss out is "organisational fit", but I'm sceptical about that anyway.
The article is very alarming and if this situation is occuring in the company of a member of CMI then I think there is a cause for taking some form of action as it is unfair on candidates and importantly very unfair on the managers themselves. It is also going to be potentially damaging to the reputation of the company, with the risk of legal action being taken.
This is where a strong HR function can be so effective. In my organisation HR works in partnership with managers and no one is able to interview without receiving recruitment and equality training first. We provide very practical workshop-style learning events which focus on our policy and practices and are highly interactive. Managers get the chance to ask lots of questions which relate to their role, as well as complete various exercises that take them through the whole process. We use assessment centres extensively and have staff trained to administer, interpret and give feedback for all the psychometric tools we use. HR are present at most but not all selection events and act as a facilitator and coach and help managers further develop their skills.
If companies do not have HR there are many organisatons who will provide tailored training. The assumption that everyone instinctively 'knows' how to interview seems more prevalent than you'd expect in 2009, given the way recruitment methods have developed over the last 10 years or so. I always describe the recruitment process as the shop window of the organisation. Its where people can sample what really happens in the company; it is a two way assessment process. It is so important to get it right - for everyone.
This doesn't surprise me at all. Whenever I've had interviews you can tell instantly the ones with trained HR staff and ones without. The difference in quality is staggering.
I worked for a company that uses assessment techniques and, indeed, trained as an assessor for the occaisions when we would run assessment centres for certain managerial roles.
The main technique employed was the use of telephone based profiling. These were after you thought someone might be worthwhile putting through to that stage following a first interview where you would score them against a series of questions looking for key indicators - the phone call took it a stage further in sophistication.
The thing about all of these types of profilings is that they are indicators - not 100% accurate. If you rely on them you could take on people who wouldn't succeed and turn down people who would. The odds were that you would get more right choices this way though.
This was useful for managers who were not so good at recruitment. They would tend to stick to the message from the profile. The better managers would understand that it was only an indicator and were able to delve much more in depth and take better decisions.
Althoug I had an excellent track record on recruitment I knew the profiling wasn't perfect. I was one of the guinea pigs when they first looked at the system to see how it measured existing people - it got me wrong then. When they used it internally for a massive redeployment programme it still got me wrong (maybe I should have tried to answer how I knew they scored it but I just answered as I would normally). I guess what was frightening was that the man at the top said if I had been an external applicant they wouldn't have looked at me further as they wouldn't have wasted the time trying to find out more but they knew that the profile didn't reflect what they knew about me so I got the job!
At the end of the day, it is a numbers game to some extent - if you have more chance of getting it right this way than not then you use it. I don't say it is a perfect system but nothing ever is.
By the way, in response to Colin's comment, the system looks exactly for certain words or phrases - they are the hits. If you don't use them it doesn't get counted! For most people the profiling is wuite accurate though.
Hi Penny - couldn't agree more about the recruitment process being the shop window of the company. I used to spend a fair bit of time in the first interview explaining to people about the company, what we do, how we want to be seen, etc - ie selling them the company - before asking them anything other than what they already knew about us. Many others only did this if they thought they were keen on the person because it wasted too much time.
I saw it as two fold. First it was good pr generally as well as hopefully getting them to want to come to us having got a feel for the copmany and me as their potential overall boss. Second it gave them a bit of a chance to relax early in the process. I found this worked really well. Many people commented on the style of interview and the atmosphere even when they were not offered the chance to take it to the next round.
Forgot to mention - I also spent some time explaining the rather lengthy process they would go through to get the job if they were successful in each round. For a sales manager that would be a first interview, a telephone profiling interview, a follow up interview, a 2 day assessment centre, and then a final interview (although sometimes there might be one more in their first to check on something further before the final one).
"....the system looks exactly for certain words or phrases - they are the hits. If you don't use them it doesn't get counted!"
Aren't you then assessing someone's linguistic skills rather than profiling their character and ability to do a certain job?
Does this also discriminate on the grounds of race / culture where many "non UK" personnel will have very different ways of constructing sentences and many of the words, whilst in existence and use in the english language, may not exist or be frequently used in other cultures?
Hi Penny,
I'm not sure that being a CMI member, you should attempt to take action against your employer beyond compelling them to do things right and lawfully, although hopefully with the CMI becoming larger in membership and the recognition of the value of professionally qualified and accredited managers in organisations, there will slowly be a change in culture to acknowledge the significant benefits the CMI and its members brings to industry, from recruitment to retirement.
'Does this also discriminate on the grounds of race / culture' - apparently not according to the external experts who run the system. I think that the number of variations of words and phrases available allowed for this - ie it wasn't just one word or phrase per topic.
In response to what you are measuring, there is a lot of research about the way people speak that has influence on other people. If you are looking for managers who will have influencing skills than the way in which they communicate will be key.
A study by UCLA suggeted that 93% of communication is non-verbal (2008), so that adds an interesting dynamic to telephone interviewing and selective key words being used to analyse a person?
Perhaps interviewers should be getting training on body language and other non verbal cues also - but where would it stop? Graphology; phrenology?
'A study by UCLA suggeted that 93% of communication is non-verbal (2008),' - nothing new in that survey, it has been well documented before about the high level of impact that non-verbal behaviour has. That's why the telephone profiling is only part of the equation. They have already had one onterview before they get there.
Despite this, what you say with the right non verbal behaviour has an impact. Try saying soemthing like - 'you are not going to do xx' at the same time as nodding your head up and down and see the confusion it causes!
By the way Colin - you might want to read this post re the need for congruence betwen what you say and your body language
http://blog.managers.org.uk/post/The-myth-of-non-verbal-communication-12...
Again though, there are cultural differences which will influence body language. And even when you get to the interviews, you're looking to hit these "key" words or phrases.
Have you ever had anyone from a racial equality organisation come and assess the viability of the range of phrases or is there an assumption that you've (i.e. the organisation not you personally) got it right by adding in a few alternatives?
Interview training is absolutely necessary to ensure that when multiple interviews are going on - that some candidates aren't being given an unfair boost or disadvantage by going into rooms with inconsistent interviewers.