When the Interview Was Good But the Person Was Wrong

When the Interview Was Good But the Person Was Wrong

Most poor hiring decisions do not announce themselves on day one. In fact, the person often starts well enough. They have the experience and they can talk through the role. They know the language of the job, and during the interview, they probably sounded like someone who would fit in quickly and make life easier.

Then the small things begin.

They arrive late and have a reason, or they miss a deadline and have an explanation. They cut a corner and say it was only this once. They need more follow up than expected. They create little pockets of friction that are hard to name at first, but easy to feel. Nothing is dramatic enough to trigger immediate action, but the manager starts noticing that the role still feels heavier than it should.

That is the uncomfortable reality of many mishires.

The problem is not always that the person cannot do the job. Often, they can. At least technically. They may have the qualifications, the experience and the basic intellectual capacity required for the role. The real issue is that they are unreliable, careless, low effort, resistant to feedback or simply not suited to the demands of the environment.

This is why poor recruitment decisions can feel so confusing.

On paper, the candidate made sense. In the interview, they made sense and their previous experience made sense. Yet once they joined the business, something did not quite work. The work was done, but not well enough. The attitude was acceptable, but not helpful. The behaviour was not so bad that it created an immediate crisis, but it was never good enough to build confidence.

At more senior levels, there will always be situations where someone is promoted into a role that is beyond their current capability. The intellectual demands of leadership, strategy and complex decision making should not be underestimated. Some people are capable at one level and then struggle badly when the demands increase, i.e., “the Peter Principle”.

That grey area is where many businesses lose time, energy and money.

An interview can tell you how a person presents in conversation. It can give you examples, impressions and useful information. For highly technical roles, it can also be used to check qualifications and ask specific technical questions. But interviews are limited. Candidates prepare and some perform well socially and some know how to say the right things. Others may be far more capable than they appear in a short conversation.

The frustration many managers feel after a poor hire is not just anecdotal. Research has long shown that behavioural traits such as conscientiousness matter at work. In plain English, reliability, follow through and care in the work are not soft extras. They are performance factors. That is why a selection process should look beyond whether someone can explain the job in an interview and gather better evidence about how they are likely to behave once they are in it.

A good selection process is not about making candidates jump through unnecessary hoops. It is not about slowing things down or making the process feel cold and mechanical. Done well, it should respect the candidate, use their time wisely and give the employer a fuller picture of the person being considered.

That is why recruitment should not rely on one source of information. Decades of selection research show that some hiring methods predict future performance better than others, which is why relying mainly on an interview leaves too much to chance.

Psychometric testing can add something that interviews often miss.

It can help assess personality traits, emotional intelligence and general aptitude. It can help identify whether a person has the behavioural characteristics suited to the role and the intellectual capacity to meet its demands. It does not replace good judgement, but it gives that judgement better information to work with.

A better selection process reduces the risk of being persuaded by confidence alone. It helps distinguish between someone who can talk about being reliable and someone whose profile suggests they are more likely to behave that way when the pressure comes.

Most mishires are not mysteries.

They are often the result of a process that looked mainly at what the person had done before and not enough at how they are likely to behave next; and that is the part worth improving.

Because when the wrong person joins a business, the cost is rarely limited to their salary. It spreads into supervision, frustration, rework, team morale and missed opportunities. The business may still function, but everything feels harder than it needs to.

Better recruitment does not guarantee perfection, but it gives you a better chance of seeing the person behind the interview performance before they become your problem to manage.



Summary

Most mishires are not caused by a person lacking the technical ability to do the job. More often, the problem sits in behaviour, reliability, judgement, motivation and fit. Traditional interviews can help assess experience and technical knowledge, but they often miss the traits that determine whether someone will perform consistently after they are hired. A stronger selection process that includes psychometric testing gives employers better evidence about the person behind the interview performance.

If you want to reduce the risk of hiring someone who interviews well but performs poorly, Fermion can help you build a more reliable selection process. Psychometric testing adds evidence about personality, emotional intelligence and aptitude, so your hiring decisions are based on more than confidence, charm and a polished CV.

Better hiring decisions come from better evidence. Psychometric assessment helps you understand how candidates are likely to perform, not just how they present.

The focus of Fermion is "Psychometric Testing for Recruitment" and “Recruitment to Retention: How to Select Good Staff & Keep Them”. If you would like to learn how to select good staff and keep them, please contact us at Fermion.

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Eleanor Roosevelt.

NB: I use ChatGPT as a writing and editing tool, but the ideas, judgement and final views in this article are my own.