Employers and other decision makers typically use interviews to make their final decision on candidates applying for important positions. The process begins by reviewing resumes, and checking references, before the final and typically most important act, the interview. Within mere minutes, an interviewer can form a strong impression of a candidate. For instance, this may run along the lines of “this person seems confident, articulate, and driven” or “this person does not represent themselves well, and likely won’t be a good fit”. By the end, the interviewer may feel that they truly understand the candidate. But what if that feeling is just an illusion? This is the question tackled by Prof. Jason Dana of Yale University and his colleagues in their research on unstructured interviews. Their findings challenge one of the most common hiring and admissions practices: the belief that sitting down with a candidate and having a free-flowing conversation reveals valuable insight. In reality, their study suggests that unstructured interviews often do more harm than good, leading decision-makers to rely on misleading impressions rather than objective facts.
