What’s wrong with most interviews?

Remember Head and Shoulders shampoo? As their slogan from the 1980s told us, "You only get one chance to make a first impression." Unfortunately, this is also true about many interviews. Interviewers judge people on their appearance, their handshake, or their ability to answer the first interview question. Studies show that we all do this:

"About 20 years ago, two University of Toledo psychology students, Tricia Prickett and Neha Gada-Jain, conducted a study and found that judgments made in the first ten seconds of an interview could predict the outcome of that interview. They discovered this by videotaping real interviews and then having study participants watch short clips: Slices were extracted from each interview beginning with the interviewee knocking on the door and ending 10 seconds after the interviewee took a seat, and shown to naïve observors. Observors provided ratings of employability, competence, intelligence, amibition, trustworthiness, confidence, warmth, and likability. For 9 of the 11 variables, these thin-slice judgments correlated significantly with the final evaluation of the actual interviewees. Thus, immediate impressions based on a handshake and a brief introduction predicted the outcome of an employment interview.”[1]

"The problem is, these predictions from the first ten seconds are useless."[2] Two researchers in the 1990's found that unstructured interviews (which are more susceptible to the first impression effect) are about 50% as effective as structured interviews (where each candidate is scored objectively on a consistent set of questions.)

First impressions matter. But don't rule out a candidate or decide "she's the one" in the first ten minutes of the interview. Ask a consistent set of questions. Take notes. And make a decision based on data, not on gut feel.