Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
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Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
Revolutionizing Hiring: Insights from Dr. Deborah Kerr on Data-Driven Job Matching
Discover the future of hiring as we welcome Dr. Deborah Kerr, co-founder and president of Affintus, whose revolutionary approach to job matching promises to transform the way organizations identify top talent. Dr. Kerr, with her rich academic background and experience in public policy and organizational performance, sheds light on how predictive data can outshine traditional resumes and interviews, providing a more reliable method of finding the perfect candidate. Her diverse journey, from upstate New York to the beaches of South Delaware, is a testament to her commitment to innovation and excellence.
Join us as Dr. Kerr shares her insights into the complexities of talent acquisition, emphasizing the crucial role of accurate data and structured processes over outdated hiring practices. With a career spanning academia, the Texas legislature, and the nonprofit sector, she reveals the common pitfalls organizations face and the importance of evidence-based management in overcoming them. Her personal passions, from weightlifting to sourdough baking, offer a glimpse into the life of a woman dedicated to both professional and personal growth.
Our conversation takes a deeper look at the significance of mutual due diligence, cultural fit, and effective interviewing techniques. We explore the challenges of change management within HR departments and the necessity of using scientific data to support hiring decisions. The episode concludes with a nod to the origins of Affintus and the critical balance between intuition and analysis in achieving hiring success. Whether you're an employer or a job seeker, Dr. Kerr’s insights provide a roadmap for navigating the modern landscape of job matching.
I know you're gonna find it. You gotta keep on at it. Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. I am so pleased to welcome our guest today. It's gonna be a lot of fun. She is a friend, but also an expert in her area. That, I think, is going to be really, really interesting, both for employers as well as for job candidates.
Speaker 1:So our guest today is Dr Deborah Kerr, who's the co-founder and president of a company called Affintus. Affintus delivers a predictive job matching service that identifies which candidates are most likely to be star performers in the new position. That could be a new hire. It could also be a promotion before even reading a resume. So that's a bold claim, a fintest. Data are more reliable than resumes and more accurate than interviews, and we're gonna figure out why that is. Deborah is a recently retired from the faculty at Texas A&M, so she's now professor emeritus at Texas A&M the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, where she taught public policy theory and organizational performance measurement. Deborah often speaks at national, regional and state programs about managing strategy, performance measurement and managing people, and she holds degrees from St Mary's College, notre Dame, columbia University and of course the University of Texas at Austin, and with that Deborah welcome hook them.
Speaker 2:There you go. Poor Texas, there you go. Hey, so, um, and so it's so nice to have you thanks for joining us today you are so welcome.
Speaker 1:Thanks for the invitation absolutely and where do we find you today? Are you in Texas?
Speaker 2:I am not in Texas today. I am at the Atlantic Beaches in South Delaware.
Speaker 1:Ooh nice. Now we're recording this in January, so I'm not sure that's exactly in season, but when it is in season that's a pretty special place.
Speaker 2:It's crazy. Yeah, it's a great place. For those of us who live here full time, it's even great out of season, Awesome.
Speaker 1:So as is our want to do. Let's just do just a handful of little icebreaker questions to help people get to know you personally, and then we'll dive into our topic. So just easy one, and maybe we've already hinted at this, but where were you born and raised?
Speaker 2:I was born in upstate New York and raised in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1:Now, how does a young lady from the northeast find her way to Texas?
Speaker 2:Well, as quickly as she could I actually. After I finished high school I lived in Scandinavia for a little while. Then I came back and did undergraduate work at St Mary's at Notre Dame, Worked a little bit, did my master's at Columbia and then realized that I thought there was more to learn about management and measurement. So went to the University of Texas for my PhD, where I did specialize in management and measurement Awesome.
Speaker 1:Now, sorry, people that know me will know that I just reacted to Scandinavia, which is a region, not a country. So where were you over there?
Speaker 2:I was in Fålund, Sweden, which is about halfway north, about halfway to the Arctic Circle. It's a mountainous and lake region.
Speaker 1:That whole area is beautiful. And again, people that know me know my daughter lives in Norway, so I have a strong affinity for all things Scandi.
Speaker 2:Jettebra.
Speaker 1:Oh, listen to you. Wow, hada and Hadebra. So just a little bit about your family, deborah.
Speaker 2:I have one daughter. She is a rocket scientist for real I mean, who knew? And she works on the James Webb Space Telescope, which is the one taking all of those fabulous readings and discovering new galaxies and what we thought were stars turn out to be galaxies. So I'm pretty proud of the work she's doing, contributing to our human understanding of what came before us. So that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you should be proud. And who knew? Her mama has a phd, so I don't know and then, um, so she's smarter than I am.
Speaker 2:Just because you have gifted children does not mean you have gifted parents. That's the sign.
Speaker 1:I don't know. You've got three letters after your name, so maybe, so just very quickly, do you mind painting a picture of your career for folks that sort of led you to founding Offentus.
Speaker 2:I'll start with Texas, because that's the bulk of my career. After I finished my PhD, I worked in the Texas legislature for 14 years, oh goodness, and helped to run a legislative agency, and that was a lot of fun. At one time someone told me I was the second highest female in the state agencies, which is you know. That was a long time ago, so that's pretty cool. And then I was invited to begin teaching at Texas A&M in their new public policy school, and so I began teaching there and they gradually wanted me for more and more of my time. So I did that, and in the meantime too, I spent a little bit of time two years as an executive in a national nonprofit. So I have experience in that public sector, the nonprofit sector, and of course I've consulted with the private sector.
Speaker 1:Very cool. And then, lastly, what do we find you doing when you're not doing amazing academic research and making a super successful business?
Speaker 2:Probably a couple of things. I've been lifting weights and not not competitive weightlifting, but I do enjoy lifting weights and I also have a non COVID sourdough starter that is older than I am.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is too funny. So I love asking these questions because invariably I do learn something new about the guests, and we've known each other for a while and I've already learned like three things that I didn't know about you, so that's fun. So let's dive into the topic Debra, because it's important.
Speaker 1:You're very, very passionate about it and I think this is a topic that will resonate with pretty much every listener in the sense that we have all been hired by somebody, so we've all been part of talent acquisition, of the hiring process. Many folks listening are actively part of hiring people and we all know that it's just this infinitely tricky thing, because people are tricky and we're very, very complex and hard to figure out. But you've applied some science to this and I was wondering if you could. Let's start with just the problem statement of like why is hiring people so hard? It seems like it could be easier to make a decision and those decisions work out well, but the data you've got suggests they don't work out well nearly as often as we'd like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. At least 50 percent of the time a new hire doesn't work out, they don't reach high productivity and about 30% of those are gone within 18 months, which is extremely expensive for an organization. And the reason it's so hard is that number one? We're human, as you said. It's so hard, is that number one? We're human, as you said.
Speaker 2:The way our brains work independently really gets in the way of good decision making, and we can talk about that. The second part of the difficulty is that the data used by most hiring managers, hr professionals, hiring managers, hr professionals those data do not predict future success. In other words, they're actually ancillary to predicting who's going to be the best hire. Most managers use resumes, they use interviews and we know that we use a lot of gut intuition as we make hiring decisions. Managers themselves some interesting research managers themselves report that they tend to rely on subjective personal preferences or on organization traditions to make their decisions and, of course, those sources of data are not very useful and they're not very accurate. Managers also tell us that they really don't bother with best practices.
Speaker 1:Really. And somebody will say that I don't bother with best practices.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, when you do research, you can find out amazing things. But yes, they say that they don't follow their own procedures. Even if there's a process, a structured process, which is very important for good hiring, even if there is a structured process, managers say they tend not to follow it, it takes too long, they don't know the value of it, and so on. So to make better decisions, we really need just a few things One accurate information, better data and a structured process and a structured process. Those three factors go a long way to improving the accuracy of a. Will you repeat those again? Yeah, accurate information. Okay, better data, valid data How's that different?
Speaker 1:How are those first two different. I guess that's where I was stuck. Data How's?
Speaker 2:that different? How are those first two different? I guess that's where I was stuck. Information is what the individual will tell you about themselves, and data are collected through a structured and validated process.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Okay.
Speaker 2:So we're taking that human intuition, that human response out when we're talking about the data.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Okay. And then the third was what?
Speaker 2:A structured process. I was just reading some recent like within the last two years research this week and it is amazing the difference that having and following a structured process helps, and our HR professionals listening will be very interested to know that. One study that I read this week indicated that when HR designs the hiring process and managers follow it, there's a great positive effect on the decision making. So we don't want managers designing the process, we want people who understand HR designing the process.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I remember reading a few years ago do you know the name? Laszlo Bock. He was like the SCP of people at Google back in the day and they had a very structured process and they act. This is wild. They actually remove the final decision making uh authority, I guess is the right word from the hiring manager and put it to a team, because they found that when the team did the hiring and this was a cross-functional team made the final candidate selection, that their success rate was way better than some of the numbers that you were quoting at the beginning of this.
Speaker 1:Because again there are so many biases that are built in to the process. There's a famous pastor named Rick Warren and he talks about how we rationalize and he says rationalizing is telling ourselves rational lies and I think that that really does come into right. That's pretty good, because we ignore stuff and we get emotional and we do what's comfortable and we do what's familiar and we don't like to be wrong we ignore stuff and we get emotional and we do what's comfortable, and we do what's familiar and and it just and we don't like to be wrong, I'll raise my hand if you're watching this video.
Speaker 1:I'd like, yes, so so, with all of that said, you know I mean we're in 2025 now. You know we've been talking about, you know data and analytics for a long time. That's not a new topic and your modeling is not new and things like that. The biggest expense on most companies income statement is you know compensation, people costs, you know comp and benefits like why isn't and we're going to talk about what you guys do here in a second, but just broadly and we're going to talk about what you guys do here in a second, but just broadly why are we further along with using good data and a good process and to make smarter decisions?
Speaker 2:That is such an interesting question, and one interesting part of it is this is an issue faced by organizations globally. This is not just a stumbling block for US companies. It's around the world that companies do not invest in the very section of their company that will give them the highest return, and there's some research that shows that when you teach managers how to manage, when you then coach the managers in managing and you make needed adjustments, you can increase revenues by 5 to 15%. Increase revenues by 5 to 15%. The reasons that are suggested that companies don't adopt these practices is one we're human and we don't like to change. And if I've always done it this way my whole managerial life, are you telling me I've been wrong all this time? That's hard. Wrong all this time. That's hard.
Speaker 2:Another part of that has to do with the hesitance of the C-suite to invest in the employee part of the company. A couple of reasons for that One. It's not like building a building where you can see every day something's getting better. It is a longitudinal investment and it's expensive to have managers who understand how to manage, and we have 100 years of research. We know what good management looks like. Our managers don't know what good management looks like. Why is that? Our managers don't know what?
Speaker 1:good management looks like. Why is that? I mean, why is there this gap between what the body of knowledge that exists and the adoption of that body of knowledge?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we academics struggle with that. One of the reasons that makes it difficult to have the uptake of the scientific data is that we're not presenting the information in a way that is readily accessible for managers. What we're talking about is learning, expanding knowledge and, by the way, that's hard and we have a culture now where we think we have something that we're calling AI and we have those models and somehow we have begun to think that we can quickly make changes and have immediate response, and there's no research that says that finds that to be the case. And it's like football coaches you got to choose hard, because hard is what gets you there. I mean LeBron James bless his 40-year-old heart still does footwork, drills at practice, right basics of good management in place, and it is the knowledge piece.
Speaker 2:We know that it's been some interesting surveys done that only 14% of managers report that they have ever read a research article 14%. Most managers, when they face a question or a problem, they call their buddies and say this is what I've got going on, what have you done about it? They don't check the validity of the information they get from their buddies, they just think, well, my buddy's in the same boat as I am. She must know what's going on going on.
Speaker 2:Probably not the case, with only 14% being aware that there is validated, confirmed information about what works.
Speaker 1:Well, what's? Going on Because I think, unfortunately, we could probably chew up the entire time just ripping, know, ripping apart the problem statement and, you know, sharing frustration. What has attracted, uh me to your work is you've always been very upfront that there are a lot of quote assessment tools out there but very few, if any, are actually validated to the end result of actual in-job performance.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And so before we get into the actual and this is not an infomercial for a Fintest I just find you unique in the world of assessments in this regard. Can you just sort of talk about what the benchmark should be for a quality assessment, please?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, when we talk about validity, we are talking about the degree to which a test, an interview question, a resume review, a screening conversation, the degree to which that action actually relates to and measures what you think it's going to measure. So, for example, one plus one is a test question. Okay, we know that the ability to answer that question is an indicator of knowledge of addition. Do you have the ability to perform basic addition? The question one plus one equals becomes less valid if we're looking at it as an indicator of advanced math because it's not connected to advanced math. The addition question becomes invalid if we try to extrapolate from that knowledge of I don't know American history. So what we're doing is trying to figure out does the tool that we're using or the process that we're using, or the process that we're using does it actually relate to the outcome that you want?
Speaker 1:okay, so that that's what the benchmark should be. So then, is there reverse engineering? That happens, deborah, that we sort of start with the desired result and work backwards to figure out the things that would be indicative or predictive of that end result.
Speaker 2:About what makes a successful property manager, what makes a successful server at a restaurant, what makes a successful manager of IT operations. The way that they have collected those data is valid. So what they do is collect information from 2,000, 3,000 people about each job. It's a structured process. Then, using those large numbers of data, they can determine what are the most important factors for success in a particular job. There are about probably a thousand jobs in existence. People might call them different. Like you know, customer service ninja, stop doing that. There are about a thousand jobs and each of those jobs has been studied in this way since 1927, so almost 100 years. So it's very cool that we can start with existing data and go from there.
Speaker 1:Okay, no, that's great. So there's this big body of longitudinal I guess it's sort of longitudinal. It's been around for a long time. There's lots and lots and lots of observations, whatever. So there's a I assume, assume a consistent data collection method and all that stuff yeah. So so what's the? You know, one of the things that you talk about say sort of this three step path. Then what does the data tell us?
Speaker 2:the most important criteria you know kind of broadly, are there are three when we're looking at determining who's the best fit. The three areas that we want to examine is thinking ability.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:The second one is personality factors. Personality is a thing. We know personality factors we have decades of research that help us understand what is this human thing we call personality, we call personality, and the more we study it, the more we see that those factors are looking like they're again, they're global, it looks like they're human related as opposed to North America related. So we have the thinking part Do you have the ability to do the problem solving? The second is that personality. Do you have the personality that matches the requirements of the job? And then the third is culture fit? Is that individual going to perform well in the kind of culture that your organization has? So those are the three. So when you're looking at any kind of assessment for hiring, you want to make sure that those three big areas are covered.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm guessing that there's a double click on each one of those, so people think differently, right? I mean, you can be a very analytical thinker, you could be very creative thinker, you could be very strategic thinker. Are those the kinds of attributes that are teased out in something like this, or is it just sort of?
Speaker 2:those are actually personality factors are really okay those are person and the, the thinking part.
Speaker 2:We look at problem solving, okay, and there are assessments that evaluate someone's ability to solve particular kinds of problems and they usually get progressively more difficult. So problem solving is one, numeric function is another one. Can you do math? Yep, it's pretty foundational. And what kind one Can you do math? Yep, it's pretty foundational, and what kind of math can you do? And the third area is verbal. How are you in terms of using verbal attributes and language to help you solve problems? So those are cognitive functions in that thinking arena.
Speaker 1:And those are consistent across human beings, irrespective of country, culture, whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's what it looks like right now, and what we do know is those three combined explain most of what makes someone successful in a job across jobs.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. I apparently jumped the gun and ran to personality by accident. Can you explain that a little bit more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, personality is the way that we then use, as you described, the way that we use our thinking, the way that we then use, as you described, the way that we use our thinking, the way that we operate in the world. So there is something called the big five that many listeners probably are familiar with, and let me just talk about those. One that we've all seen and read about is the personality attribute of introversion and extroversion, and that is an established personality factor. We know that once we reach adulthood, say early 20s, those personality factors are pretty solidified and when we look at the research about how stable they are across a lifetime, they're very stable. So, for example, do you think I'm an extrovert or an introvert?
Speaker 1:You're asking Bob.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm going to guess that you are an introvert.
Speaker 2:I am and you know you're so exceptional in everything you do. Most of the time people say I'm an extrovert because I teach classes, I make speeches, I do coaching, I do all of that stuff. So these are these personality factors. You can't tell by looking.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Is there a, because I think we've talked about this in a separate conversation is there a split or a distribution that's understood, about what percent of the population is extroverted versus introverted?
Speaker 2:Yes, and I can't remember what those numbers are. It is not a 50-50 split.
Speaker 1:In my executive coaching work. I would guess that it highly skews introverted. But I'm open to be very wrong about that. But most people do self-describe as an introvert who has learned extroversion skills. Right, because we need those. Who has learned extroversion skills right, because we need those. But okay so, but the way that we apply our cognitive skills back to what I was saying earlier around being more analytical, more strategic, more creative I'm sure there's other, better attributes. You're saying that those are really kind of tied more to personality.
Speaker 2:So, for example, there is an important factor of personality that has to do with agreeableness in the workplace. Some workplaces are very driven by competition yeah, and the workplace values and encourages people to tussle with ideas, to pick apart somebody else's ideas. So that's at one end of the agreeableness scale. It's more of an individual competitive approach. Other organizations have an approach that is more team-oriented, that people support each other rather than compete with each other, and so there's more of a team orientation. So those two kinds of organizations require very different personality skills.
Speaker 2:Have we bled into cultural fit then Not yet.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, not yet. So why don't you lead us into that then? Because that way we'll sort of have a more holistic picture of the cognitive piece, the personality piece, and then because it sounds like culture to me. So I'm interested to hear you fully onboarded on that.
Speaker 2:Culture is actually a subset of personality.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, and it is interesting that organizations that we work with will describe a certain kind of culture. This typically managers that they think they have. This is typically managers that they think they have. When we talk to employees, we find out that that's not the same culture that employees experience. So this is really important. One aspect of culture that I think is a good example has to do with something called perfectionism how attuned is the individual to precision and attention to detail in the work that they do? So if you are hiring a lab technician, you want somebody who's pretty attuned to those details. An accounting professional, you want someone who is very focused on those details. For a top salesperson, not so sure you need to worry about perfectionism all that much. So we had a client once who was hiring a salesperson and he told us that his first screen had to do with whether or not the person had any typos in their resume.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And we said, you know, not sure that that's relevant to success in a salesman. He said you mean I may have missed my best salesperson? Yeah, you might have missed the best salesperson.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, like Salesforce compliance, which you know most salespeople hate, which you know most sales people hate, you know, having to feed the beast with salesforce, right, but who loves it? The cfo loves it. What do cfos love? Details, precision, accuracy, exactly. Yeah. So, um, one culture, um, you know that I've got a relationship with johnny taylor at sherm and um, you know, johnny often, of course, talks about culture and the way that he describes it. A couple things is once, it's not what we say, it's what we do, it's how stuff actually gets done. So, to your point, sometimes there's a somebody said this the other day and and uh, I need to give credit for this when, when the video doesn't match the audio right.
Speaker 2:That's a great way.
Speaker 1:So, tamla, thank you for saying that. But yeah, so like when the video doesn't match the audio, so the audio is. You know what's on the website, what's on the walls and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:What people say in meetings.
Speaker 1:But then what actually and how stuff really walls and stuff like that. The video is like yeah, what people say in meetings, but then what actually and how stuff really really gets done is culture. The other thing Johnny says about culture is that it's mostly agnostic in the sense that unless it's like illegal or immoral to say that working at Tesla or SpaceX in an Elon Musk environment versus working at something that might be more touchy-feely, for lack of a better term- the American Heart.
Speaker 1:Association. Thank you, the American Heart Association. Johnny's like Elon, doesn't have a bad culture or a good culture. It's whether it fits you or not is really the determination that you need to make. We need to make for you of whether you're going to fit in well here under, you know, this intense pressure, because that's how they roll and if you like that and you want to be a part of that, that's cool.
Speaker 1:If you don't, probably not a good place for you. Yeah, is johnny kind of getting things that resonate with your culture, or would you either edit that or expand on it?
Speaker 2:Well, I would edit it only slightly, and that has to do with the personality, the factor of do you like a competitive, energetic arguing culture or not?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's in our scheme, that's in personality, but what Johnny's saying is right.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm just imposing our structure, no, no, no, that's what I'm trying to see is sort of the overlay and how smart people intersect here on things. So on the culture piece, maybe this is a good place to kind of turn this around a little bit. Not only is the company evaluating the candidate or the existing employee for a promotion. At the same time there should be mutual due diligence and the candidate should also be looking for fit. Could you talk about that for a minute?
Speaker 2:also be looking for fit. Could you talk about that for a minute? We love to help individuals and companies For the companies we have counseled them to. I think this is an interesting example. A manager says we want a collaborative culture on our team. The culture itself is not collaborative. So if we establish that, then they say, well, I want it to be collaborative. Okay, so you hire someone in who has that culture, preference for collaborative, personality preference for collaboration. Well, you gotta manage the heck out of that, because that lone person who is collaborative is in a sea of competitive people and you can't change the culture with one hire. So we have to help managers see that that's okay to want to change that and be aware of the effects of that, but you have to take care when you're doing it and you have to know that you're going to have to invest in changing that.
Speaker 1:You made me think of like a food desert. It's a collaboration desert that you just drop that person into.
Speaker 2:I know, I know and you know the psychological literature is so interesting. When you drop someone in who's different, the rest of the team behaves in a way to exclude that individual. And I'm talking in a scientific way because they're so different and yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1:That's the new kid in the lunchroom and staying by herself, yep.
Speaker 2:But I'm wondering I probably asked my question poorly Can you talk about the utility of an assessment from the candidate's self-knowledge can go a long way to preparing for applying to a job and also doing self-assessment, self-development, making decisions that relate to their work life. So and I'll reference my own company just because this is something that we have focused on for a while my own company, just because this is something that we have focused on for a while Our assessment is open to any job seeker. Really, any individual can come to our website and, for free, complete the questionnaire. The purpose, we hope, is to help them learn the language of what their strengths are, help them understand how their strengths fit into the workplace, so a person can complete the questionnaire. When they submit the questionnaire, our system builds them a private and secure portal that they can access and read details about their strengths. We have explanations, we have samples of questions they may want to ask a manager during an interview to help them, as you say, figure out. Is this a place for me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean okay. So again, if you're listening to this, you probably know me, you know Career Club maybe a little bit, and we work for free with job seekers, and deborah, you and ryan have been very supportive of us and I thank you for that. And you know helping people, you know one, have some self-awareness of what their strengths are. And then, two, have vocabulary to be able to, you know, articulate that to a hiring manager or when they're networking or whatever the case may be. And then three, to be able to do part of what you were just talking about, which is do better due diligence on is this going to be a fit or not? I'm highly collaborative.
Speaker 1:This doesn't seem to be. It's a very competitive environment, which is cool for them but probably not cool for me, and you know the way I would coach somebody is like the worst thing that could happen is you take the job because you just wanted the job and you got to go to work there every monday and and it's just stressing you out because it's actually not a good fit. And these are things that we can, you know, know better on the front end. They're very learnable and I love what you're saying, debra, like people are saying well, bob, what questions should I ask? How can I learn more about the culture? Well, debra and Offentus can help you learn very good questions and things to observe about an organization, to collect better data, to be able to make a smarter decision on if this is a fit for me or not. This is not an asynchronous kind of a thing. This is mutual due diligence and it's highly in your selfish best interest to be able to suss out is this a good fit or not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what we're aiming to do is to remove some of that hiring black hole, that job seekers experience, which is terribly disheartening. As we know, and we hear from your groups that that's a hard burden to not hear anything yeah no feedback.
Speaker 1:No, it's a. I was on a call yesterday with somebody and she's trying to guess where she's missing, you know, and it's like I'm getting the interviews but I'm not getting the offer. And now she's just supposing, and with a lot of, I'm sure, inherent biases into how she's understanding what's going on, but trying to pivot, you know, but not really knowing where she is in that whole process to be able to know if I'm here.
Speaker 1:What do I need to change to get to where I want to be? But she doesn't have a good sense of where she is, which is very frustrating and discouraging for her, as you said. So you know information data process. Did I hear you right on that? Yeah, so in terms of of an interview process, ok, this is Bob talking. I am highly frustrated listening to candidates about these super clunky, you know interview processes that people go through.
Speaker 1:And stupid questions, Dumb questions, 13 people I've got to talk to, I've got to do a case study, blah blah blah. What does a good process look like? What is the? This is the right way to ask the question. What does the data tell us a successful process looks like For interviewing?
Speaker 2:Yes ma'am.
Speaker 2:All right. First of all and this is also very doable and it's science-based First of all is recognizing that the interview is not a conversation. It is not. It is a data collection system. It's another way for a manager to add to the data she already has about the candidate, because hopefully there's job match assessment results and there's also some indication of the work the individual has done in the past. But the interview is a way to get quality information related to the job as it's performed.
Speaker 2:In that company, managers have a lot of knowledge about the job. I'm not sure they're always invited to bring that knowledge into the conversation. So we have to recognize that we're involved with human interaction. We are automatically introducing our own biases into that discussion. There's nothing we can do about it and it's not. You know, humans are humans and what we know from the research and this would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic when we look at high level executive hires, when executives hire others, they typically, if we do the research and we take apart what they've done they made their decision on do they share the same extracurricular activities? Do they play golf? Are they fans of the hot Spurs soccer team? You know it's, it's. That's what it comes down to for their decision making, and of course, that's not what you want.
Speaker 2:So we know from the research that most interviews deliver little useful data. But we can make them better and we can make them better by, first of all, asking behavioral questions. First of all, asking behavioral questions. All of our HR listeners are probably saying, well, yeah, and then try to get managers to do that right. So the behavioral questions and they relate to the most critical aspects of the job. So if we're to think about this grouping of tasks called essential functions, when we take a job and we say here's really what the job is, these five or six functions, when we use our questioning to look at those key areas, you're going to get better data.
Speaker 2:It is also useful to plan the questions ahead of time. I mean, write them down. This is where HR you don't want managers doing this, you want HR experts included in that development process. So you develop that behavioral questions and then, before you interview anybody, the manager identifies. Let's say you're using a four-point scale. The manager tells you if somebody's answer you would rate a one, what kind of answer would that be? So one that misses the mark. So you actually develop anchors to again help your thinking, and if they just develop anchors for the bottom and the top, what's the best answer that somebody could give you to this question so you actually identify what they're looking for ahead of time? You won't know it when you see it.
Speaker 1:I've never heard anybody say that. I really like that. That's brilliant. So back to there's only a thousand jobs when it's all said and done. There's a very large body of data that you know we can really kind of empirically derive, you know, success attributes from Then back on your standardized questions, Debra, depending on the job and what's this pick. If there's another job that you know more off the top of your head, but just like a salesperson and the five functions, like, does the hr person even need to develop the questions? Can they just go look them up and just know if we're interviewing?
Speaker 1:sales people we need to interview for these behavioral these, these, and here's what we need to ask right.
Speaker 2:Well, with our system, yes, they can. There is no database similar to the description of the jobs. There is no database of questions. What we did when we developed our system is recognize that, and we recognized how difficult it can be. I mean, we have managers say to us look at a resume. I don't know what to ask them, I don't know. So what we've done is we're back to the validated assessment. We're looking at those three areas In our assessment. When the individual response is a moderate match to the job requirements, we provide a series of customized questions that managers can just read and use, and if the person is a very weak match, we also ask questions. We provide questions too, and they're all customized to the job itself. So that is tough, and if the organization is not using an assessment that does what ours does, then you do have to spend some time on these questions and you can do it. I mean, it's quite doable.
Speaker 1:So to your point earlier when you said behavioral questions and any HR person is going to go duh. Would it also be duh that, from the candidate's perspective, using something like the STAR format is an effective way to communicate those things, to deliver the information that's being sought?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can be, as long as you have some kind of a frame that you're plugging your response into right To help you express your strengths in a way that relates to what they're asking about.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean, that's what we like about the STAR format and I think you know I've modified it just a touch. Yes, what was the situation? How did you think about it? Back to thinking skills. What was the action that you took and what was the result? It provides a framework that helps you get your thoughts collected. You talked about preparing questions in advance. Well, this is preparing answers in advance.
Speaker 1:And I got a pretty decent idea based on the job description and everything else. Chat GPT is a great tool to help you on this as well. What are they likely to ask me? So that you don't tell this rambly story about you know my flight got canceled and then you know I got the flu. It's like interesting, but I don't care.
Speaker 2:I'm not relevant, I'm just trying to understand.
Speaker 1:Can you sell or not? I think, again, these are very complementary things of asking questions in a very consistent way and being able to deliver answers in a very consistent and on point way. So if you had your magic wand, debra, and you were in front of a bunch of either hiring managers, hr people, you pick the audience. What do you wish people would? Just if they could change something right now to get better at this, what would you have them do?
Speaker 2:I would have them learn about science, the science of hiring, which is not taught in any degrees that I've been able to find, and it is related to the psychology literature which is easily accessible through Google Scholar. But I would encourage them to learn what is the reality of the job through the scientific lens. Science actually can do some great things for you. It can save you time, it can save you money, but you have to know what it can do for you. So that's the first thing I would say Do some work on developing and HR can take the lead on this what is the literature on how you hire a highly productive individual? We've got research on that, it's not a secret. So that's the first thing that I would do, um, secondly, I would say that that structure is really important and and not giving managers the option of skipping a step. You mentioned earlier the idea of not giving the manager.
Speaker 1:Oh, at Google. Yeah, what they used to do at Google.
Speaker 2:There's other research done, certainly one particular study from our friends at Harvard. They found that when companies give managers the discretion to hire whomever they want, ignoring all of the data, they always make a worse hiring decision.
Speaker 1:Yeah you mentioned sports like Tottenham hotspur. Good on you for knowing tottenham, um, but uh, where you know, there's a, there's a director of sporting and then there's the, the manager. So the person that brings the players in is different than the person who's coaching and running the team. You know, and very rarely is that power live in one person, right? Those are different skills.
Speaker 1:So, I think that's interesting. And then, lastly, maybe this is as important as anything is, and maybe this is directed towards our HR listeners, or maybe not, but how do we do a better job of getting the change management process underway? So that, to your earlier point, I'm not following your dumb process, mr HR, ms HR, lady, right Like I'm going to do what I want to do Appreciate your process, appreciate the science. All I know is I think she's a rock star and my friend from the last company told me she's a rock star and we're hiring her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and she kind of looks like my favorite sister-in-law Even better.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:You know Andy Warhol, the artist. I love this thing that he said. He said they say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Speaker 1:Okay, so make that, sorry, make that pragmatic and practical.
Speaker 2:Yes, how do we go to do that?
Speaker 2:at XYZ Construction Company today, HR function needs support for incorporating science into the process that they are designing and offering. And HR's job is not to manage, it's not to make the decision, it is to provide the information and accessibility for managers to do the kind of job that they can do with good data and good decision tools and what we know. You know I don't even want to talk about this Most executives are not really that engaged with the human side of the operation, which is stunning to me because, as you pointed out earlier, it's the biggest line item in the budget. Really, you're not going to pay attention to that. So, for HR having the data, having financial information, how much does a bad hire cost? If you've got high turnover in one of your departments, what's the manager doing and how much does that cost? Because it costs a lot. The most recent estimates of a cost to replace a bad hire it's like $50,000. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And we've got you know we can cost out what we do to hire and it's a lot of money.
Speaker 1:All right. So be mindful of your time. If you had to just sort of wrap this up, can you just give us maybe a little a 60 second summary of what you would hope people walk away with today?
Speaker 2:Remember that the data are available, that you can help managers make better decisions by, I guess, insisting that they use data and providing the tools to do that. The second is to focus on managers developing and this is teaching managers about a data-driven approach to decision-making. We're not going to eliminate bias. What we can do is help people be aware of what they're bringing to the table when they make their decisions. And then, continuing to you know what I would do if I were in the position of designing the systems. I would find me some high level managers who are open to new experience a personality factor who are curious, who are interested in improvement at the scientific level, and I would have lunch with them, like once every other week, and talk about what kinds of experiences they're having and gain their support in implementing an evidence-based approach to not only hiring but managing as well.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Okay, if, whether on the employer or the candidate side, if people want to learn more about Affintus, what's the best way to do?
Speaker 2:that Go to affintuscom A-F-F-I-N-T-U-Scom.
Speaker 1:I've never asked you this Where'd the name come from?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, you know, naming a company is hard and we're no exception to the difficulty. We actually ended up. We had generated a list of terms, but we kept coming back to affinity Do you have an affinity? So we did some background research on the etiology. Where does that word come from? Well, of course it comes from Shakespeare, because so much of our language comes from Shakespeare. But when we saw that that use so it's been in the lexicon for four or 500 years and we decided to use affintus because it's got the U S at the end. So it's for us, not for you, and the affinity and the, the predilection to be good in the job. So that's where that came from. There you have it.
Speaker 1:So I knew that we could end on a good note. So thank you so much, debra. This has been great. Like I just you know, I come from data and analytics. I'm naturally a very intuitive kind of thinker, but I have a very deep appreciation for but what are the facts? It's interesting that's how you feel.
Speaker 1:What are the facts, and you've done so much work shedding light on, as you say, something that people think is more art or voodoo or something, and yet there's actually science to hiring great talent and again, you know, my heart is with the candidate. There's also science that you can use to help you pick the right company so that you can not just survive but thrive in your career right, which is what we want for everyone. So I appreciate everything that you're doing, debra, appreciate the support that you show us with our job candidates, and I want to say thank you, too, for all of our listeners and viewers for spending a few minutes with us today. I can't encourage you enough to go to Offentuscom again, whether you're an employer or a job candidate, and just do a little bit more due diligence, a little bit more homework on how you can improve, whether it's your hiring or the company that you work for. So, debra, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, bob, it's been a real pleasure.
