University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Job Interviews Are Broken. There’s a Way to Fix Them.
Article

Job Interviews Are Broken. There’s a Way to Fix Them.

Instead of focusing on credentials, let’s give candidates the chance to showcase their will and skill to learn.

Adam Grant
The New York Times, 2020
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Editorial Rating

9

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  • Applicable
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Recommendation

Often, job interviews are futile. Candidates fudge their answers and oversell their qualifications. Managers ask the wrong questions and subconsciously rely on biases. With expert insight and a sense of humor, organizational psychologist Adam Grant walks you through common roadblocks that keep you from hiring the perfect candidate. His examples will encourage you to rethink your job interview process, and build a creative and collaborative team.

Summary

Improve job interviews at your company by asking candidates about behavior rather than timeworn questions with easily feigned answers.

Soon after the math major showed up to the office, author Adam Grant was ready to dismiss him. Someone whose hobby was building robots and who didn’t look Grant in the eyes during the interview obviously couldn’t be the right fit for the open sales position. However, how could Grant really know? Even expert recruiters reject outstanding candidates within traditional selection processes. And even Walt Disney faced rejection before becoming the champion of cartoons.

The typical job interview doesn’t give managers an accurate picture on who will succeed in the workplace. Asking about someone’s “weaknesses” is an invitation for the respondent to lie. Prattling on about “working too hard and caring too much” is a classic way to dodge the question. Instead, have candidates describe how they handled...

About the Author

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the best-selling author of Originals, a book about nonconformist thinking.

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