Hi, I'm Lou Adler. Over the past 40 years I've been helping candidates, recruiters and hiring managers attract, interview and recruit candidates for professional staff and management positions in large and small companies. How can I help you either find a better job or hire a great person?
This is a real concern, and it’s a perfect example of why traditional hiring methods—like relying on resumes or generic behavioral interviews—are becoming obsolete. Performance-based Hiring, and specifically the performance-based interview, is designed to cut through these kinds of surface-level tactics by focusing on what really matters: a candidate’s ability to deliver results in the context of the actual job.
Here’s how it works. Instead of asking generic questions that AI could easily script answers for, you anchor the interview around specific performance objectives tied to the role. For example, if the job requires launching a new product in six months, you’d ask the candidate to walk you through a comparable accomplishment—step by step. What was the situation? What challenges did they face? How did they solve them? What was the outcome? This level of detail is nearly impossible for AI to fake convincingly because it requires deep, contextual knowledge and personal insight.
Another safeguard is to make the interview a two-way conversation. Ask follow-up questions that dig into the nuances of their answers. For instance, “You mentioned leading a team of five—how did you handle resistance from team members who weren’t on board with your plan?” AI can’t replicate the spontaneity or depth of a real human interaction. And if a candidate struggles to provide specifics or seems overly rehearsed, that’s a red flag.
Finally, you can integrate pre-interview assignments that require candidates to demonstrate their skills in action. For example, ask them to prepare a brief presentation on how they’d tackle a key challenge in the role. This not only tests their ability to think critically but also gives you a chance to evaluate their communication style and problem-solving approach in real time.
The bottom line? By focusing on past performance and real-world problem-solving, you’re assessing candidates on their ability to do the job—not their ability to game the system. What’s your take on this approach? Do you think your team would be open to shifting toward performance-based interviews?