Performance Based Interviewing: A Unique Interview Method That Really Works

I used to be the Director of Training for the Business Intelligence/Business Analytics Division (one of 6 divisions) in a large software company and I built a staff of 16 from scratch.  We used a rather unique method of interviewing job candidates called Performance Based Interviewing that involved doing a team interview involving all the members of our team.

For instructional designers, we did the traditional interview first but then gave them 2 different versions of the same module from one of our courses to evaluate.  We gave the candidate 15 minutes to evaluate both versions of the training module and then they had to come back in front of our team and tell us which version they preferred and why.

For trainers, we told the candidate in advance of the interview to select a training topic for them to deliver at the end of the interview.  That way, they had ample time to prepare, so they could do a great job.

For our salesrep, we asked the candidate to simulate a sales call to a prospective customer, make their sales pitch, and then try to close the sale.\

For our training admin person. we asked the candidate to outline all the tasks they would have to perform as a training admin person, especially steps that most training admins wouldn't have thought to do but would make a big difference.

After a candidate finished the interview and had left, I asked the training team members to rate each candidate on a scale from 1-10, where 10 was the highest.  If a candidate got all 10s, we extended an offer to that candidate immediately.  If there was a mixture of 9s and 10s with mostly 10s, we would usually extend an offer to this person.

We hired all 16 people on our team using this method and we never had a bad higher.  By having candidates perform a task for us that was a significant part of their future job, we could readily tell who was the best candidate without question.

I also knew the Director of Software Development at a company I worked for.  He was interviewing a group of software developer candidates, and he gave each one an assignment to write a short program in a fixed timeframe and the program had to run error free when the time was up.  When the time was up, one candidate had a bug in his program and as a result, he wouldn’t normally have been considered for the job  This guy stayed after for 10 more minutes, found the bug, and fixed it.  The director was so impressed with his tenacity that he hired him on the spot.  Pretty cool!

Basically, this method is a Performance Based Interview and it really works.  Give it a try and see how much you learn about each job candidate that let’s you hire the best!

Larry LaBelle

CEO, Win a Job Fast Inc.