Job Interviews Don't Work

Parrish argues that the standard job interview — a short, high-stakes conversation with a stranger — is one of the worst-validated tools in modern hiring, full of cognitive biases (halo effects, similarity-to-me, first-impression anchoring) that produce confident hires which then fail. Drawing on the research literature and the practices of organisations that hire well, he walks through the limitations and pitfalls, then offers alternatives: work-sample tests, structured interviews with consistent questions and scoring, and slow trial periods that let actual performance speak.