Interviewing Is Little Better Than Flipping A Coin — Here’s How To Improve Your Odds

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

Not long ago, I was interviewed by Jeff Hyman for his Strong Suit podcast. In his introduction, he mentioned that 50% of new hires fail within a year of their starting work. Some of the most common statistics that exist have been compiled by Dr. John Sullivan, a staffing SME, who points out that 46% of new hires fail within 18 months, between 40 and 60% of new management hires fail and nearly 50% of executive hires are also judged failures within that time frame. Equally damning is one more statistic: Only 19% are judged as “unequivocal” successes.

This all begs the question: What goes wrong? It isn’t like these people suddenly became incompetent or stupid. If the odds of a new hire working out are little better than flipping a coin, why go through all the effort? Where does the process break down?

I worked in search for more than 40 years and filled more than 1,200 full-time positions (plus consulting assignments) during that time. Generally, what I saw boiled down to three huge mistakes.

1. There is a lack of clarity regarding a manager’s reasons for hiring. Skills and experiences are identified in huge laundry lists of requirements that don’t weight the scale for items of greater or…