A pilot shortage is currently affecting the aviation industry—and more open jobs are on the horizon. Within just two years, the pilot shortage could range from 35,000 to 50,000 open jobs.¹ Within two decades, approximately 650,000 new pilots will be needed to fill global vacancies.² Using pilot personality data in talent acquisition and talent development is an essential and impactful first step in overcoming the pilot shortage.

Causes of the Pilot Shortage

Pilot job openings and pilot job requirements are two of the primary causes of the looming pilot shortage. More than 60 percent of today’s US commercial pilots will face mandatory retirement within the next 20 years, creating significant pilot job openings.² Others are leaving the aviation industry altogether because of disruptions related to economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While domestic air travel matches pre-pandemic demand and global air travel is expected to catch up soon,² air cargo demand has fallen sharply and may continue to drop.³

Furthermore, requirements to become a pilot are stringent. Commercial pilots for regional or national airlines typically need to hold a bachelor’s degree, earn four successive pilot licenses, meet physical and flight-hour requirements, and demonstrate prior experience.⁴ The time, cost, experience, and technical skill required to enter this field are considerable barriers to new pilots.

Regional airlines seem to be most heavily impacted at present. Eighty-three percent of regional airlines are experiencing talent recruitment challenges.¹ This may be because national carriers tend to attract more pilot talent; regional airlines have reduced flights in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; and some pilots are exiting the industry early.

Not only can it be difficult to find pilot talent, but it can be exceptionally difficult to find quality pilot talent. Using personality assessments can help address the pilot shortage by identifying potential pilots who are likely to be successful, as well as current pilots who perform well or need development.

Pilot Personality Characteristics

With the world’s largest database of research into the relationship between personality and job performance, Hogan can predict performance for nearly any job—including that of a pilot. In such a high-stakes job, personality can mark the difference between safety and tragedy.

In brief, necessary pilot job tasks include identifying and categorizing information, making decisions, monitoring processes, ensuring compliance with standards, and operating aircraft vehicles and equipment.⁵ Pilot ability and competence in these work activities derives from personality tendencies enhanced by training.

Personality assessment data benefit organizations by lowering recruiting costs, preventing accidents, and improving retention, engagement, and productivity. More specifically, pilot personality data help aviation organizations identify, select, and develop safety-conscious pilots.

Assessing personality can ensure that both airlines and flight schools select and train the best pilots. Personality data could also help reduce or replace some unnecessarily restrictive pilot criteria, such as flight program entry requirements, bachelor’s degrees, or number of flight hours before licensure.⁶ Increased screening for flight students, for example, would ensure that limited training resources were allocated to pilots most likely to succeed and continue in the industry.

The Pilot Performance Profile

Hogan began developing the Pilot Performance Profile, a tool to predict pilot performance, in 2015. Using personality and performance data from a sample of more than 1,000 pilots from 13 airlines across the US, Europe, Middle East, and Asia, Hogan designed the profile to report on the core competencies of effective pilots. To ensure that the profile could aid in hiring, developing, and training pilots globally, Hogan aligned the profile with the International Civil Aviation Organization competency model.

The Pilot Performance Profile can help improve aviation safety, ensure effective pilot performance, and address the pilot shortage. Useful for both talent acquisition and talent development, the report features five recommendation levels based on an individual’s percentile scores across its seven competencies.

Hogan Pilot Performance Profile Competencies

The competencies in the Pilot Performance Profile are based on the Hogan Personality Inventory, which describes seven everyday personality characteristics, and the Hogan Development Survey, which describes 11 potential performance challenges, or derailers. Together, the results of these inventories provide insight into how a pilot is likely to perform at their best and the shortcomings that may arise during times of stress, pressure, or complacency.

These are the seven competencies of an successful pilot:

• Following Procedure – applies knowledge of regulations and operating instructions to perform tasks in a reliable manner and avoid unnecessary risks
• Communication – communicates clearly and listens actively to ensure mutual understanding with others
• Leadership – provides direction, delivers and receives feedback, and drives crew performance to facilitate safety and manage conflict
• Teamwork – facilitates an engaging and constructive team environment focused on accountability and mutual respect
• Problem-Solving and Decision-Making – leverages available resources to evaluate problems, identify solutions, and execute a plan of action without compromising safety
• Vigilance – maintains awareness of the aircraft, its environment, and people to recognize and address potential threats
• Work Perseverance – demonstrates self-control and a thorough approach to overcome obstacles and complete operational tasks

How Hogan Helps: Case Studies

The two following case studies demonstrate how Hogan helped two airline companies. The first case study shows how personality assessment data can contribute to a safety culture, and the second shows how it can improve talent acquisition.

Improving the Climate of Safety

An airline company asked Hogan to help evaluate the safety climate for its pilots. The airline wanted to improve safety-related behavior in the workplace. We surveyed employees to evaluate pilots’ safety awareness and areas for improvement.

In the survey, pilots rated their company’s trust and morale high. This indicates that the airline does not tend to put others at risk or cut corners that compromise safety. However, the pilots also rated their company’s safety attitudes and culture of safety as low. This indicates the airline could improve safety by ensuring transparent communication, being strategic about hiring, and valuing safety over production.

Selecting High-Performing Pilots

An airline company asked Hogan to evaluate its selection process for pilot candidates. The airline faced a growing demand for service and sought to increase the number of flights on its schedule. We measured job performance among incumbent pilots using supervisor performance ratings. Then, we collected assessment data to provide the airline with a more targeted approach to select high-performing pilots.

The return on investment of the Pilot Performance Profile is significant. Pilots whose personality scores aligned with the profile were 3.8 times more likely to be rated as high performers compared to those with scores that did not align with the profile.

Our research shows that by using the Pilot Performance Profile, airlines can expect to see a 22 percent improvement in overall selection accuracy, selecting 11 percent more good hires and avoiding 11 percent more bad hires.

As concerning as the pilot shortage is, we know that pilot personality data can help. Personality assessment at any stage of the pilot job can save precious time and resources to get skilled, safety-conscious people into the pilot’s seat.

References

1. Murray, G., & Green, J. (2021). After COVID-19, Aviation Faces a Pilot Shortage. Oliver Wyman. https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2021/mar/after-covid-19-aviation-faces-a-pilot-shortage.html
2. Boeing. (2023). Pilot and Technician Outlook 2023-2042. Boeing. https://www.boeing.com/commercial/market/pilot-technician-outlook/
3. Garland, M. (2023, November 6). ‘Overstaffed’ FedEx tells unhappy pilots they can join American Airlines. Supply Chain Dive. https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/fedex-express-pilots-overstaffed-american-psa-airlines-jobs/
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2023). Occupational Outlook Handbook, Airline and Commercial Pilots. US Department of Labor. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/airline-and-commercial-pilots.htm
5. National Center for O*NET Development. (2023, October). 53-2011.00 – Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers. O*NET OnLine. https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-2011.00
6. Bogaisky, J. (2023, April 10). The Pilot Shortage Is Playing Havoc with Air Travel. Here Are Some Remedies. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2023/04/10/the-pilot-shortage-is-playing-in-havoc-with-air-travel-here-are-some-remedies/?sh=5ad2029fcd2a

Recent social and political trends in the United States have not been kind to assessments. For instance, the number of colleges requiring standardized test scores for admission continues to drop.¹ As another example, assessments can be collateral damage in the bipartisan movement to re-examine occupational licensing.² And a growing movement also looks to malign the use of assessments in the workplace, leading to thus far unsuccessful attempts to ban personality tests in the workplace.

Despite this misguided scrutiny, using assessments to inform organizational decisions is more important now more than ever. We had a discussion with some assessment experts at this year’s Annual Conference for the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), and we wanted to share these insights with you.

What is causing this scrutiny?

Although such skepticism is not new,³ it seems to have increased with more public awareness on the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace. Still, several factors play a role.

Unrealistic Expectations

People sometimes assume results based on assessments should be perfect and error-free. Unfortunately, this is an unrealistic expectation. Virtually all assessments are based upon statistics and probabilities, which have inherent uncertainty. Similarly, assessments measure human tendencies and phenomena, which are impossible to see directly. It’s not as simple as holding a ruler to an object to measure its length. To understand people, we must make inferences based on things we can see.

In other words, assessments can’t perfectly solve all the world’s problems. However, they are useful for facilitating more objective and accurate decisions in the workplace. So, when assessments don’t live up to these unwarranted expectations of perfection, users get disappointed easily and lose confidence in all assessment uses and applications. If the public applied this logic to their medical decisions, no one would take any medications because drugs are not effective for everyone all the time. In fact, many common medications are even less effective than proper applications of psychological assessments.

Misuse of Assessments

Speaking of statistics, designing and validating assessments requires complex analyses and computations. When assessments are used to understand people, who are even more complex, a proper understanding of assessment results requires familiarity with psychology and related behavioral sciences. It is human nature to fear what we don’t understand, and many people don’t understand assessments or how they are used. At Hogan, we do not fear assessments. Rather, our passion for socially responsible people solutions drives us to love assessments. We have decades of expertise designing, evaluating, maintaining, and implementing high-quality assessments. Unfortunately, however, many options that claim to be personality assessments lack the scientific foundation and socially responsible safeguards of Hogan’s assessments.

A lack of understanding can lead to improper assessment applications in organizations. For instance, many are familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and too often organizations use such assessment for hiring. However, the MBTI is not designed for employee hiring.

Another improper use of workplace assessments stems from recent advances in artificial intelligence and large language models. That is, some assessment providers have used these new technologies to avoid offering human interaction in interpreting assessment scores and giving feedback. The problem is that this violates psychologists’ ethical guidelines, which require that only qualified people use psychological assessment techniques.

When personality or other psychological assessments are interpreted incorrectly, the test takers can experience stress and misdirection. When improper uses of assessments go wrong, it is easy to view all assessments as faulty based on these isolated “bad apples.”

What are the implications?

Some version of an assessment, whether a personality assessment or structured interview, is the main way to make more accurate decisions with less bias in an employment context. The scrutiny against assessments and related decision-making tools pushes people to favor more flawed and biased decision-making strategies, such as human judgment and intuition. Because organizations must attend to their brand image and public reputation to support customer relations and effective recruiting efforts, they may follow public opinion—no matter how misinformed—at some point and to some extent. As a result, talent professionals would be left to make decisions without the aid of assessments.

What would the world look like without assessments?

The only other alternatives to assessment-based decision-making are pure human judgment or random approaches. Although it is easy to see the superficial benefits of human judgment, human judgment is severely flawed. In fact, human judgment is problematic in so many ways, one could write an entire book on the topic. Many scholars have done just that (e.g., Kahneman, 2011). Human decisions are shaped by expectations, biases, experience, and heuristics that distort accuracy and fairness, even without the decision-maker knowing. This is precisely why experts started looking into better ways to make impactful decisions: workplace assessments.

With most assessments, the decision-maker is presented only relevant information, such as a personality score. In other words, all they see is a number that tells them about how the individual is likely to behave. The decision-maker does not see the person’s race, gender, age, disability, ethnicity, or any other irrelevant characteristic that could activate problematic biases. On the contrary, when a decision-maker uses only human judgment, we have no way to find out for sure exactly which factors were evaluated in reaching their decision. Unlike human judgment, assessment-based decision-making allows for continuous improvement of tools, protection of individual rights, and evaluation of decision-making practices.

Beyond human judgment, the other alternative to assessment-based decisions is pure random selection, akin to rolling the dice. Although this ensures everyone has an equal chance of being selected, it imposes an unreasonable burden on employers to hire individuals regardless of the ability to perform their work. How would you like to work alongside many incompetent coworkers?

How can we improve the reputation of assessments?

Because organizations will eventually have to follow public demand, it is crucial to take steps to improve the reputation of assessment use in the workplace.

For instance, assessment experts can conduct research and provide education on assessment applications in a way that is accessible and relevant to a general audience. Accurate and engaging stories about proper assessment use and comparisons to alternatives, such as human judgment, seem like promising strategies for connecting with lay audiences. Experts can also work with assessment critics to help mend the breakdown in communication between social scientists and the lay public.

People can also inform themselves of the differences between proper and improper assessment use and increase their self-awareness of their own biases, all of which should help shape more realistic expectations and equip them to protect themselves.

Without assessments to support workplace decisions, employees and organizations will be left to navigate the treacherous world of human biases and error without scientific and evidence-based insight.

This blog post was written by Chase Winterberg, JD, PhD, director of the Hogan Research Institute, and Brandon Ferrell, PhD.

References

1. Nietzel, M. T. (2023, June 13). The Test-Optional College Admissions Movement Continues to Grow. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/06/13/the-test-optional-college-admissions-movement-continues-to-grow/?sh=7f2b919b1326
2. Cottle, M. (2017, August 13). The Onerous, Arbitrary, Unaccountable World of Occupational Licensing. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-obama-occupational-licensing/536619/
3. Highhouse, S. (2008). Stubborn Reliance on Intuition and Subjectivity in Employee Selection. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 333–342.
4. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

When talent is your only true competitive advantage, it makes sense to base your talent strategies on personality data.

Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp spoke with George Randle, managing partner at Randall Partners and coauthor of The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent. A former US Army officer, George has more than 20 years of Fortune 100 and Fortune 1000 global human resources and talent acquisition experience and is also a Hogan-certified coach.

“Building elite teams became this burning passion for me,” George said. “Talent acquisition has been the best function I could ever hope for.”

Keep reading to learn about George’s passion for talent, how he uses Hogan, and why personality data is essential in both executive coaching and talent acquisition strategies.

Talent Acquisition Strategy

George and his coauthor, Mike Sarraille, a former US Navy SEAL, had a combined passion for talent. They used the lens of US special operations forces, known for their effectiveness, to evaluate how organizations defined talent. Their findings led to the conclusion that hiring the right people was essential—and they share techniques for it in their book.

The Right Talent

“Human capital is the only true competitive advantage that you can hope to achieve and maintain,” George said. All the other elements of organizations are highly subject to change and chance, but organizations have significant control over the quality of their talent resources. The best talent is what makes an organization truly competitive.

The Right Seat

George explained that getting the right talent is the first step. Getting the right talent into the right seats is the second. He pointed out that two great American football quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, would have been much less likely to succeed if they had swapped teams. Different environments and roles require specific personality characteristics for success, in sports as in business.

Both the talent and the role need to be right for the hire to be successful. The Hogan assessments measure personality strengths, potentially overused strengths called derailers, and values and motivations. We refer to these as the bright side, the dark side, and the inside of personality. As a talent acquisition expert, George uses Hogan data to match people with opportunities by asking two questions:

1. Would the person be right for this opportunity?
2. Would the opportunity be right for this person?

Hogan Assessments provides the data-driven talent insights that reach the depth and specificity that effective talent acquisition strategies demand. Referring to other assessments he used before Hogan, George said, “They told you what color the house was. They didn’t tell you how it was built.”

Personality Assessments in the Hiring Process

George has hired more than 85,000 people through the teams he has built, so he’s extremely experienced in assessing and interpreting human behavior. A skilled interviewer, he nevertheless credited Hogan with improving his perceptions. “It added that scientific, data-based credibility to the work that I do,” he said.

In the hiring process, George first makes sure the client understands what success looks like in the team. In Hogan terms, this is an evaluation of what characteristics and values are likely to align with the team’s and organization’s needs. Sometimes clients may be unclear or mistaken about what strengths are needed in a leadership role.

Next, George digs into the data. He uses pre-hire data to confirm or deny a candidate—or to reveal insights to explore before making an introduction. Depending on the target role, he might administer a more extensive assessment and debrief a candidate to understand their strengths, challenges, and motivations.

Avoiding Hiring Bias

A candidate’s behavior during an interview doesn’t always reveal who they are. Hogan data helps talent acquisition experts avoid résumé seduction as well as reveal effective candidates who may be less likely to stand out. “Many times, I think I have a great candidate sitting in front of me, then I use one of the Hogan tools—and I missed something,” George said.

In some cases, “missing something” means detecting an unsuitable candidate who may have interviewed well but whose personality data showed inauthenticity or misalignment. A candidate with polish and charm could lack necessary collaboration skills, for example. In other cases, “missing something” means discovering that someone who may have interviewed indifferently has ideal personality characteristics for the role. A hidden-gem candidate might have been feeling too nervous to articulate their strengths during an interview.

By using objective, well-validated assessment tools, George matches candidates to opportunities based on data, not just impressions.

Personality Assessments in Executive Coaching

A great Hogan coach contextualizes the Hogan results and assuages a person’s confusion or concerns about their data. A great Hogan coach will also explain that Hogan data shows a person’s strengths and opportunities. It shows how their values are aligned with their career goals and their organization’s goals.

Leadership principles in the corporate world are similar to those in the military. Being able to train and coach others and develop cohesive teams were some of the key abilities that helped George transition from military service into his career in HR. “When you’re in the military, you don’t get to hire the people that you lead,” he said. That’s often true in business, as well.

Leaders who can build and maintain high-performing teams need strong socioemotional skills to develop the talent they have. When George coaches executives, he uses Hogan data to describe the importance of reputation and how strategic self-awareness can lead to behavioral changes that affect workplace reputation. He uses Hogan results to help leaders understand how they are being perceived and identify ways to adjust how their derailers manifest in the work environment. “We use the [Hogan tools] to make a plan for them to be the best version of themselves,” he said.

Talent Acquisition Advice

To George, personality matters more than technical skills. Recalling his time in military service, George said he could teach anyone to jump out of a plane, implying that technical skills can be learned. On the other hand, personality strengths like problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and innovation are key intrinsic characteristics.

Organizations that have strong talent strategies thrive. “The companies that have a talent mindset [. . .] are reinventing themselves,” he said. “They’re making sure that their number one investment is in their people.”

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 83 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

The recent US Supreme Court decision invalidating race-conscious admissions programs at colleges and universities marks a significant change for affirmative action. The implications of this decision extend beyond higher education to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workforce.

At Hogan Assessments, we are completely committed to our founding principles of social justice and fair hiring practices, irrespective of changes in affirmative action legislation. Our core purpose is to help people and organizations succeed using data-driven talent insights. Implicit in our purpose is that success should be accessible to all rather than a select few.

Aligned with these values, we will continue to use our assessments to provide unbiased evaluations of potential and predict workplace performance. We will continue to enable organizations to make equitable decisions about people, and we will continue to help organizations identify and develop leaders who will create and sustain inclusive workplaces.

We will always prioritize equal opportunity in our business practices. We urge all our clients, partners, and stakeholders to join us in advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

On July 5, 2023, the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection will begin enforcing the updated NYC Local Law 144, which requires employers to obtain a third-party bias audit for “automated employment decision tools.”

NYC Local Law 144 does not apply to Hogan’s tools. This law only applies to automated employment decision tools. The law states:

“The term ‘automated employment decision tool’ means any computational process, derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence, that issues simplified output, including a score, classification, or recommendation, that is used to substantially assist or replace discretionary decision-making for making employment decisions that impact natural persons. The term ‘automated employment decision tool’ does not include a tool that does not automate, support, substantially assist or replace discretionary decision-making processes and that does not materially impact natural persons, including, but not limited to, a junk email filter, firewall, antivirus software, calculator, spreadsheet, database, data set, or other compilation of data.”

Importantly,

“the phrase ‘to substantially assist or replace discretionary decision-making’ means to rely solely on a simplified output (score, tag, classification, ranking, etc.), with no other factors considered, or to use a simplified output as one of a set of criteria where the output is weighted more than any other criterion in the set, or to use a simplified output to overrule or modify conclusions derived from other factors including human decision-making.”

In other words, NYC Local Law 144 only applies to decision tools that serve as the primary factor upon which decisions are based. Hogan does not recommend using its tools to serve as the only criteria or to override other important criteria in personnel decision-making processes. Rather, Hogan’s tools should be used as one consideration among many. For example, no matter how impressive a candidate’s personality profile, many jobs also require a certain level of job knowledge, which is difficult to determine with personality scores alone.

Furthermore,

“’Machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence’ means a group of mathematical, computer-based techniques:

i. that generate a prediction, meaning an expected outcome for an observation, such as an assessment of a candidate’s fit or likelihood of success, or that generate a classification, meaning an assignment of an observation to a group, such as categorizations based on skill sets or aptitude; and

ii. for which a computer at least in part identifies the inputs, the relative importance placed on those inputs, and, if applicable, other parameters for the models in order to improve the accuracy of the prediction or classification.”

Here, both bullets must be met for purposes of meeting this definition. Although Hogan’s tools can be used to generate predictions (i), humans at Hogan, not computers, identify the inputs and importance of such inputs (ii). Therefore, Hogan’s tools do not meet the second bullet.

In sum, Hogan’s tools are not “automated employment decision tools” under NYC Local Law 144 because they are not used to “substantially assist or replace discretionary decision-making” and they do not use “machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence” as defined by the law.

Perhaps one of the most common tools to inform hiring decisions is the job interview. There are a few likely reasons for this. To start, job interviews have been around since the 1920s. Second, people typically want to meet the person that they could be working with to determine whether they might be right for the job. In interviews, you get a sense for someone’s social style, likelihood of aligning with the culture, ability to communicate, experiences, and ability to do the job. Lastly, interviews have strong face validity, which means people tend to perceive them as being fair and accurate.

When job interviews are at their best, they can be used to assess whether someone’s skills, experiences, and other key characteristics are aligned with the job, which allows for better hiring decisions. This makes the interview a powerful tool for selection. However, the problem is that all interviews are not created equal.

Bias and Error in Job Interviews

When interviews aren’t designed well, bias and error can impact judgments made in the interview.^1,2 An interviewer who has a more favorable impression of the candidate, for example, will likely ask fewer questions compared to applicants for whom they have less favorable impressions.³ In addition, an interviewer’s opinion of an applicant can show through nonverbal communication, affecting the candidate’s responses.⁴ These errors, among others, can provide some candidates with an advantage or disadvantage over others. For example, the candidate who is asked more questions has more opportunities to show strengths or potential weaknesses.

One way to mitigate some of the potential for error in interviews is to consider the structure of the interview.⁵ Interviews fall on a spectrum between being unstructured and structured. Those that are unstructured typically follow a more organic or conversational approach. Using this approach, the interviewer asks questions they believe fit the requirements of the job. The interviewer may or may not provide a rating of the candidate’s responses to the questions. Interviewers adopting an unstructured approach likely don’t ask every candidate the same questions and think of questions as the interview progresses.

Unstructured Interviews

This unstructured way of interviewing is common in organizations. One reason for this is that an interviewer gets to ask the questions they think are relevant to the job. If you provide an interviewer with a set of questions beforehand and ask them to “stick to the script,” they might think the list of questions is missing important components of the job. Another reason interviewers might favor the unstructured approach is because they can ask candidates questions they believe are relevant to each person.

These reasons might seem to justify unstructured interviews, but they can create problems. While interviewers might want to ask questions relevant to the job, some of their perceptions about what is required could be erroneous. For example, interviewers might assume a candidate should have a certain skill prior to being hired for a job. But it is also possible someone who learns that skill on the job will perform equally as well as an incumbent employee who entered the job with that skill.

Another example could be an interviewer who has a preconceived notion about psychology majors lacking business savvy. This might lead the interviewer to hold an overall negative impression of an applicant with a psychology degree. The interviewer might be inclined to ask that candidate more questions about business yet ask fewer business questions of a candidate with a business degree. This is unfair. Worse, this overall negative impression could be communicated indirectly or even nonverbally, causing a negative reaction from the candidate.

These are just a couple of examples of how bias and errored thinking can influence the unstructured interview process and why it could be helpful to consider a more structured interview.

Structured Interviews

In contrast to unstructured interviews, highly structured interviews are typically guided by questions planned beforehand. The questions themselves are based on the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that have been proven to be related to the job. The questions are typically asked in the same order for every candidate, and the rating options for each question are anchored with behaviors the ratings represent. Structuring the interview in these ways helps to mitigate some of the biased decision-making and other problems associated with the more conversational approach of unstructured interviews.⁶ When each candidate gets the same opportunity to respond to the same questions, the outcome of the interview is less associated with the structure of the interview itself and more with what you are trying to measure in the interview.

So, using structured interviews can be an effective way to assess whether someone will meet the requirements for the job. Each interview question is directly related to the job, each candidate has the same opportunity to answer the questions, and the interviewer has a clear and unambiguous way to rate each applicant. Using this type of interview gives our psychology major and our business major the same chance to be rated fairly.

Making the Most Out of Your Selection Process

While structured interviews are a great tool to use in hiring decisions, the interview is not the only tool you should use in your selection process. Valid, reliable personality tests are another tool that can add value to talent acquisition. Numerous studies have shown that personality is a key component for determining if someone will be a strong performer.⁷ Other research has demonstrated that gauging personality in interviews is challenging and can result in inaccurate assessment of someone’s personality.⁸ Hogan provides quality personality tests, which can be combined with an interview to better assess whether someone will be a good fit for the job.

If you have any questions about how personality tests can be used in conjunction with your job interview, feel free to reach out to our team.

This blog post was authored by Hogan Consultant Mark Shoemaker, MA.

References

1. Kutcher, E. J., & Bragger, J. D. (2004). Selection Interviews of Overweight Job Applicants: Can Structure Reduce the Bias? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34(10), 1993-2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2004.tb02688.x
2. Bohnet, I. (2016, July 18). How to Take the Bias out of Interviews. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-take-the-bias-out-of-interviews
3. Dipboye, R. L. (1994). Structured and Unstructured Selection Interviews: Beyond the Job-Fit Model. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 12, 79-123.
4. Dougherty, T. W., Turban, D. B., & Callender, J. C. (1994). Confirming First Impressions in the Employment Interview: A Field Study of Interviewer Behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(5), 659. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.79.5.659
5. McCarthy, J. M., Van Iddekinge, C. H., & Campion, M. A. (2010). Are Highly Structured Job Interviews Resistant to Demographic Similarity Effects? Personnel Psychology, 63(2), 325-359. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2010.01172.x
6. Levashina, J., Hartwell, C. J., Morgeson, F. P., & Campion, M. A. (2014). The Structured Employment Interview: Narrative and Quantitative Review of the Research Literature. Personnel Psychology, 67(1), 241-293. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12052
7. Hogan, J., & Holland, B. (2003). Using Theory to Evaluate Personality and Job-Performance Relations: A Socioanalytic Perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(1), 100. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.100
8. Barrick, M. R., Patton, G. K., & Haugland, S. N. (2000). Accuracy of Interviewer Judgments of Job Applicant Personality Traits. Personnel Psychology, 53(4), 925-951. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2000.tb02424.x