[bluGill]

Interviews have been research extensively. Yet every article I've seen gives me the strong impression that nobody is even aware it exists, much less has tried to look for it (or even better yet found it!). Everyone is "this is what I think works", but nobody gives me any reason to think their system works - they haven't verified it in anyway and so it might just be luck that they have hired good people.

Most people are reasonably good, so luck doesn't seem that unlikely - someone should draw resumes at random from their pile and make an offer to whoever wins - I'm curious how selecting for people who are lucky (or who God approves of if you want to go there) compares to your process. If you cannot show me data on why your process is better than that (or something else) I have to assume you don't really know.

PLEASE, when someone talks about how to interview can they at least put forth the effort to cite real research. If you cite someone else you can tell me you think it is invalid for whatever reason, but at least show me you care enough to read it before you tell me what I should do.

Personally I don't think this topic exciting enough to dig into (scientific papers tend to be hard to read, I want "an executive summary"). But when I interview someone I limit myself to the questions my HR department tells me to ask because they are scientifically validated to be useful.

[matteotom]

I ask this out of genuine curiosity and not to try to start an argument: could you help point us towards this research? This point frequently comes up when discussing interviews, but I've never seen references to specific research and I don't know where to even start looking.

[bluGill]

I don't know - my HR department tells me our process is research backed, but not how to verify their claim. I doubt they are lying. However I honestly don't know how to search academic literature to find it. I suppose I should ask HR someday, or you could ask your HR rep.

[matteotom]

My previous employer was about 1k engineers and elements of the interview process were research-backed, but it was mostly procedural (order of rounds, length of interviews, etc) and based on internal data. But I now work at a startup where we make a best effort based on everyone's previous experiences.

[harshaw]

i'll bite. Please give me an example of questions that are scientifically validated.

[bluGill]

"Tell me about a time when you had to work with a difficult team member"

Note that the above is the type of question my HR department tells me is scientifically validated. I have not read the research myself, nor do I know how to find it. As such if someone responds "that isn't" they might be right, you will have to judge their expertise themselves: I'm not qualified to know if they are right.