Finding The Right Talent In The Age of AI

A 3-step structured interviewing process

Bad hiring decisions have always been expensive for organizations, but they are especially costly today given the tight labor market and the importance of having the right talent in place in the age of AI. 

The strategic deployment of AI technologies is central to maintaining and enhancing competitive advantage in today's digital economy. The cost of poor hiring is amplified by the necessity of having individuals who can navigate the complexities of AI and align its capabilities with the broader business strategy. 

The expectation is that employees in the age of AI will be expected to focus on higher value-added tasks, those that AI cannot do well, such as innovating, exchanging ideas, and finding highly creative solutions to problems. It’s critical to bring new talent into the organization that has unique human skills that AI lacks. This underscores the importance of meticulous talent acquisition. 

Talent acquisition across numerous organizations is beset with challenges. Hiring decisions are typically made with limited information and with significant time constraints. Most candidate interviewing is unstructured because interviewers, typically, do not follow a predetermined set of questions or a consistent procedure for evaluating candidates. 

Instead, the conversation may flow freely, with questions arising organically based on the interviewer’s intuition, something specific on the candidate’s resume, or the direction of the conversation. While the unstructured approach can make the interview feel more relaxed and conversational, Larry Bossidy, a former CEO of AlliedSignal, once called the unstructured interview “the most flawed process in American business.” Unstructured interviewing is problematic because there is a significant unconscious bias built into the process, particularly confirmation bias and stability bias. 

The lack of standardization can also lead to evaluations that are more influenced by the interviewer's personal feelings and less by the candidate's actual competencies and skills. As a result, unstructured interviews tend to be unreliable in ensuring a candidate has the critical qualities for a position. 

So, how do we properly identify skills in the candidate interviewing process so that we bring in the right talent? 

This is where structured interviewing process comes into play. Longstanding research suggests that structured interviewing can provide more reliable insights into a candidate’s ability to do the job, especially in the age of AI.¹ Here is a 3-step approach to implementing structured interviewing to support getting AI-ready talent into your organization. 

Carefully Define What a Good Candidate Looks Like in Terms of KSFs

You need to have a clear idea of the knowledge, skills and abilities; the key success factors (KSFs) required to succeed in the role for which you are hiring. 

The job description is often the best starting place for developing the list of KSFs, but you can include focus groups, statistical analysis and other sources to round out the list. Most knowledge worker roles will increasingly require individuals to have the following capabilities:  strong social interaction skills, creativity, critical thinking ability and curiosity. 

As a result, every job candidate in the age of AI should be evaluated against those four KSFs in addition to the KSFs identified for the specific role. Once you have carefully defined the KSFs (knowledge, skills, abilities,) you can create a scoring rubric to evaluate candidates effectively. On the left side of the rubric are the KSFs you’ve identified and along the top is a 1-5 rating scale – from weak to strong. 

Decide on the Best Interviewing Technique for Each KSF

Once you have the evaluation rubric you can decide what interviewing technique to use. There are three common techniques. 

The first is experience-based interviews. These interviews ask candidates to share something from their past that is related to the KSF being evaluated. For example, to evaluate creativity using the experience-based technique you might say to a candidate: “tell me when you found a creative solution to a problem in your previous role…” 

The second is scenario-based interviews. A candidate is given a specific business problem that tests a KSF and is asked to respond to that problem in real time. Scenario questions are often “think on your feet” type questions. For example, to assess complex problem-solving capability you might present the following scenario: A windowless room has three light bulbs. If you can only enter the room one time, how can you determine which switch controls which light bulb? This question presents a scenario that requires the interviewee to logically deduce the solution through a process of elimination and inferential reasoning. 

The third is real-time skill test interviews. These interviews test more technical KSFs (coding or data analysis skills for example.) A candidate is asked to answer a pre-defined set of questions. For example, if the candidate needs to know how to program in TensorFlow you might ask: How would you implement dropout in a TensorFlow model to prevent overfitting, and what considerations would you keep in mind while doing so? An interviewing technique used should be mapped to each KSF. 

Develop the Interviewing Guide 

Once KSFs and interviewing techniques have been decided, an interviewing guide can be created. Develop questions for each KSF that match the chosen technique. For example, if a KSF for a purchasing role is “good negotiation skills,” then for an experience interview technique an appropriate question for the guide would be: “Describe a tough negotiation you had with a vendor.” If a KSF for a software developer role is “strong Python programming capability,” then there should be a real-time skill test to write a short program in python. 

In the age of AI, the structured interviewing approach will become more valuable than ever. Traditional unstructured interviewing approaches will not yield the best results when assessing a candidate requires evaluating uniquely human skills such as creative thinking and ethical decision-making. 

Do you need another reason why structured interviewing is more important today?  

Interviews are increasingly virtual and research suggests that structure benefits virtual interviews even more than face-to-face interviews.

Even though some interviewers initially struggle with structured interviews because they can seem unnatural at first, the good news is that with practice the structured approach becomes easier. 

And as interviewers begin to see the benefits in the form of more complete, accurate and fair assessments of candidates, they understand the importance of a more structured approach. Imposing a structured interviewing process in your organization will help you ensure that you are getting the best possible talent and making fewer costly hiring mistakes.  

Notes
¹ Michael Campion, David Palmer, James Campion, 1997. A review of structure in the selection interview. Personnel Psychology, 50 (3), p. 655-702.

Heide Abelli is Co-Founder of SageX Inc. Heide recently authored “You Got This! - The Ultimate Career Guide for the Modern Professional". She is an accomplished executive who prior to SageX has held senior leadership positions at leading educational technology and training providers, such as Skillsoft and Harvard Business Publishing where she developed award-winning, ground-breaking corporate training solutions.