Intriguing article — Made to Stick: Hold the Interview | Fast Company — confirms again that most interviews are useless for hiring. Literally. No better than flipping a coin. Some good advice — of course they missed a key idea: administer an emotional intelligence test… 
Seriously – what are people so bad at hiring?
My experience is that there are too many conflicting variables. I like some aspects of one candidate, I dislike that in someone else but it’s balanced by part of their history… I suspect that I try way too hard to “analyze” and I’d do much better with a simple criteria: How does it feel? I suspect that if I had 3 reasonably qualified candidates and I selected the one who “felt right” I’d be way better off than the hours of analyzing and discussing.
Occasionally we have a client serious about building an “emotionally intelligence” workforce, and of course we do extensive training, train-the-trainer programs for in-house follow-through, and ongoing coaching for senior leaders to bring this top-of-mind. But one of the most important exercises is training people who will be doing the hiring to be able to recognize key emotional intelligence competencies and hire for that. In that context, the interview in itself becomes a practical test – not just of surface behaviors like rapport and social skills, but of a deeper interplay of emotional connection.
When companies put this kind of process in place they get a better workforce. “Times like these” are actually ideal for this type of work — in a few months it’s going to be very challenging to find time to improve processes like hiring and onboarding as there’s a huge backlog of positions to fill and a torrent of placement work as the economic pressures lift and all those who WANTED to leave finally do. So smart leaders are getting ready now to ensure that the next “generation” of new-hires has what it takes to go higher.