Organizations keep using hiring methods that don't work. Discover the empirical validity of hiring methods and why organizations ignore the evidence.
"The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future. In hiring, interviewers confidently believe they can predict performance from a brief conversation—the evidence says otherwise." — Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
If the evidence is clear that resumes and unstructured interviews barely predict job performance, why do 82% of organizations still use them? The evidence is unambiguous and decades old: certain hiring methods reliably predict job performance while others are essentially useless. Yet most organizations continue using the invalid methods despite—or perhaps because of—their familiarity, social acceptability, and organizational inertia.
Understanding this paradox reveals critical gaps between what we know works and what we actually do. This disconnect represents one of the costliest inefficiencies in organizational management.
The path forward requires both understanding the psychology of why organizations resist change and implementing structural interventions that make valid methods the default.
Industrial-organizational psychology has spent decades systematically measuring the predictive validity of hiring methods—whether a hiring method's results correlate with actual job performance. The research is remarkably consistent.
Structured Interviews (r = .43 to .70): Structured interviews use standardized questions applied consistently to all candidates, with predetermined rating criteria. Research by Harvard's Google People Analytics team found that structured interviews are more predictive of job performance than unstructured interviews (r = .43 vs. r = .24)—nearly twice as effective. A single structured interview by one interviewer yields the same validity as three to four unstructured interviews.
Work-Sample Tests (r = .39 to .56): Work-sample tests present candidates with actual job tasks or simulations. Their predictive validity increases with job complexity (r = .39 for low-complexity jobs to r = .56 for high-complexity jobs), making them exceptionally valuable for technical and complex roles.
Cognitive Ability Tests (r = .51): These assess reasoning, problem-solving, and learning ability. They predict job performance across diverse roles and are particularly strong for complex, knowledge-intensive work.
Unstructured Interviews (r = .14 to .24): Open-ended conversations without standardized questions or criteria predict job performance only slightly better than random selection. Research shows unstructured interviews explain just 14-20% of job performance variance, meaning 80-86% of variation in performance is not captured. One study noted this is "not much better than a coin toss."
Resume Screening (r = .13): Despite being the universal first filter, resumes show minimal predictive validity. Research found that 43% of employers struggle to determine an applicant's actual skills from their resume, and 51% struggle to determine whether resumes are accurate. Yet 82% of employers used resumes to hire in the past 12 months.
Gut Instinct/Emotional Fit (r ≈ .00 to .15): Interviewers' subjective feelings of "fit" or "chemistry" show essentially no correlation with job performance. Yet research shows up to 97% of recruiters rely on intuition when evaluating applications.
Given the clarity of empirical evidence, one might expect organizations to immediately adopt high-validity methods. Instead, most continue using low-validity approaches. Understanding this paradox requires examining psychological, social, structural, and organizational factors.
Empirical Evidence: A 2020 study of Latvian organizations found that most respondents held on to traditional methods such as panel interviews and one-to-one interviews, despite recognizing limitations. Unstructured interviews feel natural and familiar. Generations of hiring managers have conducted informal conversations. These methods carry social legitimacy—they're expected, understood, and require no special training.
By contrast, structured interviews require discipline to implement consistently. Work-sample tests and cognitive assessments feel unfamiliar and potentially risky. The psychological principle at work: organizational inertia—the tendency for organizations to continue existing practices because of institutional momentum rather than rational evaluation.
A particularly pernicious barrier is that biased hiring decisions feel personally meaningful to decision-makers. Research on hiring as an emotional process found that interviewers' emotional reactions to candidates play a significant role in their hiring decisions, and these emotional reactions feel like legitimate insight rather than bias.
Empirical Evidence: Research on "emotional energy" in hiring found that interviewers use subjective feelings of excitement and enthusiasm toward candidates to make hiring evaluations. The interviewer leaves feeling confident in their intuitive judgment. However, research on implicit bias demonstrates that these emotional reactions are often driven by affinity bias (tendency to favor people similar to oneself), name bias, and other unconscious stereotypes. The problem: The hiring decision feels justified, but the justification (my intuitive reaction) doesn't actually predict job performance.
Empirical Evidence: A 2023 study found that 43% of employers say they struggle to determine an applicant's skills from their resume, and 51% say they struggle to determine whether resumes are accurate. Yet knowing this, organizations still use resumes because the alternative (skills testing) feels riskier.
Skills assessments and cognitive tests feel like they might unfairly exclude qualified candidates. Resumes, conversely, feel like they give candidates the benefit of the doubt. The paradox: Methods that feel fair (unstructured, personal, trusting gut instinct) are actually less fair because they embed unconscious bias. Methods that feel potentially unfair (standardized, test-based) are actually more fair because they remove subjective bias.
Empirical Evidence: A 2023 study found that HR teams have been under pressure to deliver greater talent outcomes with fewer resources. While improving hiring is a priority, it competes with other pressures around HR technology adoption, managing AI impact, and other initiatives.
Implementing high-validity hiring methods requires resources: training staff in structured interviewing techniques, investing in assessment tools and platforms, designing job-relevant work samples, and building processes that enforce consistency. For under-resourced HR teams, these feel like additional burdens on top of already-stretched capacity.
Shifting organizations toward evidence-based hiring requires overcoming these barriers. Successful organizations have implemented key strategies:
1. Demonstrate ROI Through Data: Make the business case by calculating costs of current hiring failures and benefits of improved methods. Build feedback loops that compare hiring decisions to actual performance ratings. When hiring managers see data showing structured interviews predicted performance while gut feelings did not, resistance often evaporates.
2. Reduce Friction for High-Validity Methods: Make valid methods easier than invalid ones. Rather than asking hiring managers to learn new techniques, provide: pre-developed structured interview questions (role-specific), automated rating rubrics, assessment platforms that do cognitive testing, and clear guidance on standardized evaluation.
3. Build Accountability Into Hiring Decisions: Track and measure hiring outcomes. Compare hiring ratings to performance ratings six months and one year after hire. Publicly recognize hiring managers who select strong performers. This creates incentives for improving hiring quality.
4. Reframe "Fairness": Educate hiring stakeholders that standardized, objective methods are actually more fair because they reduce unconscious bias. Frame skills-based hiring and structured interviews not as cold and impersonal, but as more equitable and inclusive.
Unilever provides a compelling case study. The multinational company implemented skills-based hiring with structured assessments and standardized interviewing. The results included:
Reduction in time-to-hire: from 4 months to 4 weeks (80% faster)
Maintained or improved quality: No degradation in hiring quality despite faster timelines
Increased diversity: Skills-based hiring reduced demographic biases in selection
Reduced cost-per-hire: Dramatically shorter timelines reduced recruiting costs
Organizations continue using invalid hiring methods not because the evidence is unclear, but because organizational inertia, psychological comfort with familiar practices, and misaligned incentives perpetuate status quo approaches.
The empirical evidence is clear: structured interviews, work-sample tests, and cognitive assessments predict job performance far better than resumes, gut instinct, and unstructured interviews. Organizations that overcome inertia and implement these methods see faster hiring, better quality outcomes, increased diversity, and reduced costs. The question is not whether evidence-based hiring works. The evidence is overwhelming. The question is whether organizations will finally align their practices with evidence.
Organization Learning Labs offers assessments of your current hiring practices, training in structured interviewing and bias reduction, and implementation support for shifting toward high-validity hiring methods. Contact us at research@organizationlearninglabs.com.
Huffcutt, A. I. (2011). An empirical review of the employment interview construct literature. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 19(1), 62-81.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Millmore, M., Lewis, P., Saunders, M., Thornhill, A., & Morrow, T. (2007). Strategic human resource management: Contemporary issues. Pearson Education.
Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 262-274.
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