Behavioral descriptive method three times more reliable
FIONA McNAIR
FOR THE CALGARY HERALD
EDMONTON
Tell me about the last time that you recognized a potential problem and turned it into an opportunity.
Please name a challenging task you were recently given and how you handled it. Give me an example of when you had to deal with a difficult co-worker. How did you handle it? How did it make you feel?
Yipes. Sounds more like a trip to the psychiatrist's couch than a job interview, doesn't it? What happened to the simple and standard inquiries about your strengths and weaknesses?
They are going the way of the Tandy computer, smoke-filled offices and working full time for the same company for 25 years.
"Our position is that selecting the right person is likely the most important task an organization does, and that's why we have gone with this type of interviewing process," explains Clint Mahlman, vice-president of human resources and distribution for London Drugs.
Behaviour descriptive interviewing (BDI) has been around since the 1980s. Its development was spurred by research showing the interview, in spite of being the second most popular selection tool used by hiring managers, is largely inaccurate and unreliable.
To deal with this, BDI uses a structured pattern of questions to probe the candidate's past behaviour in specific situations. The responses are then compared to critical job requirements identified by the organization. When properly used, BDI has been shown to be three times more accurate than traditional interviewing methods.
London Drugs is not the only Canadian organization to embrace this complex interviewing technique. Among others, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Royal Bank of Canada and many police and emergency response services also use it to weed out the best candidates.
According to one of the pioneers of this method, industrial psychologist Tom Janz, BDI works because it relies on the presumption "the best predictor of behaviour in the future is behaviour in the past."
However, Greg Mooney, a senior consultant with Janz' firm, Behavior Description Technologies, says turning human performance into an observable phenomenon is much easier said than done.
And this is the complication of the knock-offs and incomplete interpretations of the method now flooding the market, says Mooney. While they might seem simpler to understand or are more affordable, these courses are often not the real thing, he says.
"The second most budgeted training item in companies is behavioural training. Not a single Fortune 500 company doesn't use it. Everyone wants to do it," Mooney says.
"But the accuracy of system will depend on two things: how good a job did you do about clearing the criteria, and how well your people are at using it. Most organizations don't have both going for them."
Mooney says BDT has spent more than $3 million developing software tools to assist in the process.
Programs to track employee performance have also been developed by the Calgary-based company. Because in-person interviews can be so costly, BDT has also created Internet technologies to help initially screen out some candidates.
BDI in untrained hands can be disastrous, agrees Mahlman. Every manager must be thoroughly trained in the technique and scoring system. The organization also has to do their homework beforehand by identifying specific job requirements and attributes of an ideal employee.
Standard interview questions are then formulated to reflect the results of this data and statistically verified by an industrial psychologist or expert in this technique.
Whether you are in a store in British Columbia or Edmonton, every candidate for a particular type of position will be asked the same set of questions, says Mahlman. London Drugs is in its third year of using BDI.
Depending on growth that year, the Canadian company interviews thousands of prospective employees with about one in five potential candidates eventually offered employment.
Not only does the continuity provided by BDI aid in comparing applicants, it also helps to ensure fairness.
In such a tough retail market, London Drugs views each potential employee it sees as potential or existing customers.
For a long time, employee turnover has been considered a silent cost of doing business. But Mahlman points out successful organizations don't see it this way.
"Employers have to become more sophisticated and how they hire. If we don't hire the right people we are in big trouble -- this is often the only difference between organization making money or constantly struggling."
The experts further stress the interview should only be one part of the selection process. More traditional means such as checking references must be used, also.
Close Window