Interview Training Leads to More Profits

By Ira Wolfe

Interview training for managers pays more dividends than just better hiring. In a review of human resource practices at 50 large U.S. companies, Watson Wyatt found that 65 percent of companies with a highly engaged workforce provide interview training for managers, vs. 33 percent of companies with a less-engaged workforce.

Those with highly engaged workers also spend more time in preparing workers for their new jobs - 35 weeks to bring a new hire up to speed as opposed to only 15 weeks for those companies with low engagement.

Improvements in employee engagement also result from the simplest technique of explaining to a new employee why they were hired! Fifty-two percent of high financial performers said they were offered such an explanation. Less then 30 percent of low financial performers received the reason.

Behavioral interview questions improve the odds of hiring the right person by 50%. That must be why "interview questions" is such a popular search term on the Internet. The problem with this popularity is that most hiring managers and employers don't have the spare time to be searching for interview questions. That means jobseekers must be doing most of the searching. What can an employer do to get the advantage?