Speed Interviewing: Coming to a company near you.

by Mitch Byers :: May 19th, 2008 :: Posted in Enhancing Your Career, Interviewing to Win, News & Events, Selection & Hiring |

A recent article from Dr. John Sullivan discusses up an emerging trend – speed interviewing. Speed Interviewing takes its name from the once popular, Speed Dating. Speed Interviewing severely compresses the interviewing process. Compare cooking popcorn the old fashion way – heating up oil in a deep pan and adding a shallow layer of popcorn to today’s fast and easy microwave popcorn. The popcorn today is ready in jiffy with no mess or cleanup. Speed interviewing hopes to achieve the same results: faster and easier without all the messy protocols of a traditional interview. The slimmed down version is making inroads because traditional interviews has several problems:

1. Traditional interviews demand time from multiple parties, impacting production activities
2. Most managers would rather do ANYTHING other than interview someone they have never met
3. Many managers have little to no training in the interview process
4. Many hiring decisions are seen as a 50/50 crap shot, no matter how much time you spend trying to analyze the candidate
5. Many hiring managers believe their intuition is the most valid measuring stick to make hiring decisions

The article supports the point of psychologist John Gottman, whose research in the dynamics of snap decisions and first impressions is discussed in Malcom Gladwell’s best-seller Blink. Gladwell explains how “thin slicing” videotaped interactions between married couples provided Gottman the ability to predict, with 95% accuracy, the long-term outcome of the marriage.

While Gottman is able to rationalize a relationship in a matter of seconds, Dr. Sullivan’s approach is more akin to speed dating, and suggests setting a time limit between 5 and 15 minutes for the interview. This caught my interest, because when I was conducting research for InterviewRX I found a study that concluded most hiring decisions are made between 4 and 10 minutes into the interview. This coalescing research suggests speed interviewing may be valid for some companies.

Sullivan points to several advantages of speed interviewing:

1. It provides for an immediate comparison between candidates. In the morning you can interview the slate of candidates and have an offer ready that afternoon.
2. Less time is spent with people you know you will never hire.
3. If available, you are able to interview more than 2 or 3 people with the best resumes.
4. Hiring managers are more willing to interview people if they know they can get in and out and on with their day.
5. Most hiring managers don’t enjoy a formal behavioral interview and prefer to go with their gut. Hiring managers are proud of their ability to ready body language and understand emotional nuances. They don’t need an hour to figure out if they can work with someone.
6. Speed interviewing appeals to college students and recent graduates.
7. Because of the time constraints, overly prepared candidates have to abandon their canned answers and respond off the cuff, providing the hiring manager with a truer assessment.

While speed interviewing is not yet fully embraced in HR and recruiting circles, there are enough companies using or experimenting with the concept to rethink your interview approach. From the hiring perspective, committing to a hiring decision after a ten-minute conversation is pretty gutsy, but one most of us do internally, even if we don’t make our decision “public” that soon.

Sullivan mentions that IBM, Abbott Labs and Texas Instruments are using Speed Interviewing, though no specifics are given. My personal opinion is that companies will be reluctant to embrace a snap judgment platform, but may follow the pattern used by Tower Consultants. An employee from Tower shares the company speaks with as many as fifty prospective candidates in a day, allotting about 5 minutes with each one. The speed interviewing is the first step. A more rigorous technical and behavioral interview follows before a hiring decision is made. In my own experience, initial phone interviews have become considerably shorter over the years. Today, I allow 5 to 7 minutes to capture essential qualifying information. From there, face-to-face interviews are scheduled.

The bottom line for Tower and a growing number of companies is that the “speed interviewing works” and I believe it will be a trend more and more people in job transition will experience.