Business Briefing: Beware the Interview Inquisition

Keywords: Job Interviews, Hiring, Recruitment, Brainteasers, Performance Prediction
Source: Harvard Business Review
Link: Read the full article on HBR.org
Author: William Poundstone
Published: May 2003
Est. Read Time (Original): ~15 minutes

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The Core Idea

William Poundstone critically examines the trend of using high-stress, brain-teaser job interviews, questioning what they truly reveal about a candidate's future performance. He argues that while conventional conversational interviews are also notoriously poor predictors of success—often dominated by an interviewer's unshakable first impressions—the puzzle-based inquisition is not necessarily a better alternative. The article suggests that companies rush to adopt these methods without a clear understanding of what they are measuring, and often fail to extract deeper insights beyond a candidate's ability to solve a logic puzzle under pressure.

Why It Matters for Business Today

This article serves as a timeless cautionary tale for any leader involved in the hiring process. It challenges companies to move beyond hiring fads and focus on what genuinely predicts on-the-job success.

• The Persistence of Hiring Fads: The brain-teaser interview is a classic example of a hiring trend adopted because it feels smart and selective, not because it's proven to be effective. The lesson is to be skeptical of silver-bullet techniques and instead focus on methods that are demonstrably linked to performance.

• The Danger of Unconscious Bias: Poundstone highlights that traditional, unstructured interviews are highly susceptible to an interviewer's first impressions. This is an early warning about the power of unconscious bias in hiring. An unstructured process allows bias to flourish, whether it's in a casual chat or a high-stress puzzle scenario.

• The Shift Toward Predictive, Structured Interviews: The article's critique of both brain-teasers and vague conversational questions implicitly makes the case for modern best practices: structured, behavioral, and situational interviews. The most effective questions aren't about riddles; they are about how a candidate has handled, or would handle, realistic, job-relevant challenges.

The Strategic Question for Leaders

Poundstone argues that many common interview techniques, from brain-teasers to unstructured conversations, are poor predictors of on-the-job success. How does your organization actively audit its interview process to ensure that your questions are genuinely predictive of a candidate's future performance, rather than just testing for cleverness or reinforcing the interviewer's first impressions?

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