It That Good Interviewing Advice or Just a Cheap Parlor Trick?

When you read advice about interviewing, it usually falls in one of these categories:

1) Self-serving studies where the study sponsored by pre-employment testing company X, shockingly, recommends you use pre-employment testing. Whatever… your eyes start to bleed in a few seconds and you can click away without much harm done.

2) An interview with a successful CEO where the journalist asks them their secret to hiring. As if you could take the hiring process used at a PR firm in New York and apply it to hiring forklift operators in Tulsa Oklahoma. While this sort of thing is amusing, it will not help make you a better interviewer. What works in one culture is irrelevant to another.

3) Thoroughly researched works that deal with the real-world complexity of hiring, and methodically track the results over time. A good example is  George Anders book, “The Rare Find.” Research this good is indeed a rare find. Read it, learn from it, wrestle with it–it’s worth it.

4) My real problem is category four. The stuff that sounds like science, and may even be decent science–but is not grounded in any kind of hiring process. People who have not rigorously worked on their hiring process gravitate to this stuff, like a “magic bean”–a panacea for all that ails their hiring process. But when you put it in practice, you find it’s just a parlor trick.  Here are a couple examples that people sent me this month:

One article says not to lean to the left when negotiating your salary. Pish posh. Interviewing is not a game of Twister. You’ll tie yourself in knots trying to pay attention to this stuff.

Watch the video below and you will think that giving someone a hot or cold beverage will influence your opinion of them (Hint: if you are interviewing, go for the hot beverage):

This stuff is ridiculous. If you want better hiring results, ignore the parlor tricks and focus your interview process on the factors that really do predict job performance.