Billionaire Richard Branson tested his candidates by asking them to climb atop a hot-air balloon. Benefactor Mark Cuban wanted his to play a game of Jenga. And Donald Trump tests his future apprentices by, well, being Donald Trump.
While reality television takes the “show me” job interview to extremes, ordinary employers use more modest simulations to hire everyone from customer-service representatives to firefighters to chief executives.
The name for this hiring method varies – simulations are sometimes called case interviews, modeling or the awkwardly titled assessment centers – but the idea is the same: Seeing how a potential employee acts in a given situation is a better measure of abilities than an interview or even a pencil-and-paper skills test.
“Traditional tests focus on aptitude and job knowledge,” said Oscar Spurlin, an organizational psychologist and founder of Ergometrics, a firm that designs video tests to simulate on-the-job situations.
A better predictor
“What we’re trying to figure out is, can you apply your skills in a difficult environment? If you’re feeling time pressure and you have a customer being rude or pushy, are you able to smile and help the person? Or do you feel like you have to tell them to mind their manners?”
Hiring managers say simulations, although expensive and time-consuming, are a more reliable predictor than traditional screening methods, which have lost some effectiveness in recent years.
Fear of lawsuits has made employee references almost useless, and savvy job candidates can easily bluff their way through the familiar interview questions, which, along with the “right” answers are posted online.
On top of that, employers who got burned by bad hires during the talent wars of the 1990s are being extra vigilant so that they don’t have to eventually replace a hire. The cost to replace a person averages three to five times the position’s salary.
Central Pierce Fire & Rescue near Tacoma, Wash., relies on simulations to fill all openings in its 180-person work force.
Potential mechanics, secretaries, firefighters and computer-support people are put through a battery of tests to measure job skills, ethics, attitudes and patience.
Human-resources manager Karen Johnson said role playing and other exercises reveal qualities about candidates that may otherwise be hidden.
Since firefighters spend more time dealing with the public than actually fighting fires, they’re tested on both technical skills and on how they deal with irate or troubled citizens.
“There are definitely people who shine,” Johnson said. “But you’ll find that some people don’t know how to react when someone’s yelling at them. We’ve had a couple candidates throw (the role player) out the door. As you can imagine, they don’t score highly.”
Lorden Ingraham was one of 152 applicants in November for a single technology job with the department. After passing a written test, he and 19 other top scorers each spent a half-day auditioning for the job.
Ingraham solved a software-support problem posed by a role-player. Then he put together a computer. Then he had an interview with a panel. Then he waited.
Two months after he first applied, Ingraham learned he’d gotten the job.
“I’m still almost in disbelief, to be honest with you,” he said. “There’s lots of smart, qualified people out there. There always seems to be somebody better.”
The fire department uses a modified assessment center, a term for a hiring process that involves in-person simulation before a panel of assessors.
This kind of simulation job interview has been around since World War I, when the German military used it to select officers. But it didn’t reach wide use in the United States until around 1970.
The simulations for top jobs will often include a lifelike office with ringing phones, pinging e-mail messages and a subordinate standing in the doorway with an urgent question.
The candidate’s response can demonstrate whether the person is a delegator, a micromanager, a leader or a bully.
The cost to conduct one of these half-day corporate assessments – as much as $7,000 to fill one executive position – has largely limited the practice to companies hiring for top executives or to large organizations with high volumes of candidates.
So for nonexecutive positions, in-person simulations are rapidly being replaced by electronic tests, such as those designed by Ergometrics and others, including Connecticut-based Applied Psychological Techniques.
After the upfront costs to design and validate simulations for specific jobs, which can be around $250,000, employers pay between $25 and $65 per test taker, depending on the number of candidates screened.
With technology dominating many jobs now, electronic simulators are often more appropriate than the costlier in-person assessments.
“This kind of assessment is great for call centers,” said Toni Locklear, who runs APT’s Kirkland, Wash., office. “It completely replicates what someone who works for a call center has to deal with.”
Simulation interviews aren’t popular with everyone.
When the King County (Wash.) Library System asked its pool of substitute librarians to reapply for their jobs last summer and to demonstrate their library knowledge and customer-service skills, some got angry.
Other job seekers are either resigned to the idea of having to prove themselves in yet another venue, or they welcome it.
Dane Wilson has had to perform some sort of simulation for nearly every wireless retail job he’s sought.
In one instance, Wilson handled a real customer during an in-store job interview.
In most others, he takes an online simulation test, which measures his management ability, including scheduling employees, reading spreadsheets or solving a workplace spat.
Each one is time-consuming, and none so far has netted Wilson a management job, but he’s not complaining.
“If I were in the same position I would probably request that out of someone I was interviewing.”
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