• Job interviews only explain 9% of variance in job performance, research finds, leaving 91% unaccounted for.
• Both structured and unstructured interviews show low accuracy in predicting task-specific and broader skills.
• Unconscious biases heavily influence interview decisions, often overshadowing key job-related competencies.
• Overemphasis on cultural fit can lead to workplace homogeneity and neglect of actual performance capabilities.
  

Imagine you're a seasoned chef, tasked with judging a cooking competition. But instead of tasting the dishes, you're only allowed to interview the contestants about their recipes. Sounds absurd, right? Yet this job interviewing process is precisely how we’ve approached the lion's share of hiring for the past 200 years.

Yet a meta-analysis published this week by Wingate and colleagues (2024) highlights that within a sample of over 30,000 people, job interviews do not in fact predict future job performance. Thus, interviewing someone may not actually help us make better hiring decisions.

In light of this, it's worth asking: How much of our hiring decisions are based on evidence, and how much on subjective impressions? Let's explore why interviews are poor predictors of performance and discuss ways to improve hiring decisions.

The Illusion of Accuracy

Anyone involved in hiring has been there: sitting across from a candidate, convinced we can gauge their potential and predict their performance based on a 60-minute conversation. However, the sobering reality is that interviews only explain about 9 percent of the variance in future job performance.

In other words, 91 percent of what determines how well someone will do in a job is completely missed by the interview process. It's like trying to predict the outcome of a chess match by watching the players set up the board. Interviews are thus not valid tools to assess people’s capabilities and the illusion that it is an accurate tool is costing businesses dearly.

The Myth of the Perfect Interview Question

Many of us believe that if we just ask the right questions, we'll uncover the truth about a candidate. We craft behavioral questions, situational judgement scenarios, and technical assessments that we are convinced reveal the perfect person for the job. But research tells a different story.

Whether we're trying to assess behaviors, task-related skills, or interpersonal abilities, interviews show surprisingly low levels of accuracy. Both structured and unstructured interviews fail to predict a candidate's potential performance.

Further, interviews are equally mediocre at predicting both task-specific skills and broader contextual behaviors. This suggests that the standard interview format may be too blunt an instrument to capture the nuances of diverse job requirements.

Interviews are often seen as a one-size-fits-all tool to assess capability in diverse job roles. But is it really possible to use the same tool to assess a software engineer's coding abilities and a sales representative's client relationship skills?

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