Interview anxiety corrupts the signal

Selection researchers kept finding the same troubling pattern in interviews. A candidate's anxiety, how nervous they were, measurably lowered their interview scores, while later studies following hired candidates found it had little to do with how well they then did the job. In other words, two people equally capable would score differently if one was more anxious, and the more anxious one would lose, even though anxiety in a high-pressure interview says little about performance in the actual role. Now consider the popular idea of the deliberately tough interview, the stress interview designed to rattle candidates and see how they hold up. It cranks up the variable that corrupts the measurement. What it reveals is who is best at staying composed while being deliberately unsettled by a stranger, which for most jobs is not the job.

A nervous candidate tends to score lower whatever their ability, so anything that increases their anxiety makes your read less accurate, not more. The tough, high-pressure interview feels rigorous, like you are stress-testing people, but mostly it tests tolerance for artificial pressure applied by a stranger, a skill that rarely matches the real work. Unless the job itself involves performing under that kind of hostile scrutiny, a deliberately stressful interview is not measuring what you think. Calmer conditions, where a capable person can actually show you what they can do, give you a truer signal than a manufactured ordeal.

Source: McCarthy and Goffin, Measuring job interview anxiety: beyond weak knees and sweaty palms, Personnel Psychology, 2004. A later meta-analysis by Powell, Stanley and Brown, 2018, found a modest negative correlation between interview anxiety and interview performance, and studies following hired candidates have found interview anxiety largely unrelated to later job performance.

Work Rules!

Laszlo Bock, 2015

On designing hiring that measures the work, not the candidate's tolerance for theatre.