Asking the Wrong Interview Questions? Evaluating the Right Skills is Crucial

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I'm your host, Greg Gillum, and today we're digging into a powerful new article from Harvard Business Review titled, Job Interviews Aren't Evaluating the Right Skills. This is by Joseph Fuller, Ben Sesser, and William Leeds, published August 2025. Okay, let's explore why interviews often fall short and how we as leaders can shift to smarter approaches that align with our evolving workforces. Every year, millions of job seekers tailor their resumes to match job descriptions.

Meanwhile, hiring managers conduct one interview after another confident that they're evaluating the right qualifications. But, and this is key, new research says that we're largely missing the mark. Interviews often fail to meaningfully assess the critical skills listed in job postings. Now, the research shows that after the first interview, nearly 80% of the skills and job descriptions have been talked about. So that's pretty good.

And by the second interview, that number creeps up a little bit. But here's the caveat. Most of these skills are surface level mentions, not deep assessments. The interviewers tend to circle back to familiar topics instead of covering a broad spectrum of skills that are required on the job. And structured formats only improve this modestly. The most surprising gap is, AI-related expertise. Though critically important in many roles, this was addressed in only two percent of interviews in 2025.

Now, what does this mean? Well, there's a misalignment. There's a misalignment between what the job requires and what we actually see and assess during interviews. Skilled technical expertise, experience with emerging technologies, and very role-specific competencies often go untested, while the same old questions get recycled interview after interview. The result is very risky hiring decisions.

Managers may feel like they're thoroughly vetting the candidates, but in reality, candidates are simply performing well in a very narrow set of conversations. So why should we care about this as managers? Well, because poor alignment between job needs and then interview content can lead to all kinds of downwardly spiraled outcomes, like missed opportunities to identify true talent, disappointing performance on the job.

Unfair hiring, especially when interview styles favor certain personalities over real skills. In short, bad hiring decisions matter. And for managers, they can cost you time, morale, and results.

So how do we make this shift? How do we improve our interviewing skills? There's three evidence-based moves or tactics that you can try based on this article. Number one is to audit and expand your skill coverage. So first, map your interview questions to the full range of skills in your job descriptions. Typically, we only talk about a few, as this article points out. So the authors here recommend to creating a skills matrix to track which competencies

are actually being assessed. So. You know, simple Excel spreadsheet that would have a list of the competencies down the rows and then see if you track them. What kind of questions would you ask about each of them, making sure that each of them are covered. Flag your gaps, especially emerging areas like data literacy or digital tools, or, you know, do they know how to run a certain piece of equipment? What about AI? Do they have any experience with artificial intelligence?

Again, that's going to only become more and more relevant as we go on here. And then adjust your interview guides to ensure meaningful exploration of each. Okay, the second one is to deepen rather than repeat. So push beyond surface level coverage. Avoid recycling the same topics by doing this. Ask follow-up questions that really probe depth. So, for instance, not that they just have the experience that you need, but how recent was the experience?

Can they actually walk you through the actual process? Can you actually see them operating this piece of equipment, or can you actually see them doing this process, right? And by using structured questions, that's the second tactic here, which are designed to reveal real thinking and skill application. All right, so follow-up questions that probe depth, structure questions that reveal the application.

The third tactic here is incorporate skill-based assessments. So third, and this is very crucial, supplement interviews with practical assessments. These include simulations or real job scenarios, technical exercises, work samples, actually bringing in a work assignment. and having them work on it during the interview. I love case studies. That's another example. How would they think through a particular situation at work?

Task-based challenges or relevant projects that you've just recently, maybe recently finished or you're working on currently and there's a problem with one of your projects. Have them try to figure out what you might do next. Research shows that pairing interviews with validated assessments leads to better hiring alignment and fairer evaluation of each of the candidate's strengths. Okay, here's an optimal bonus tip in the article, embracing emerging competency.

So as a bonus, keep an eye on emerging competencies. Again, this is maybe like AI familiarity or digital adaptation, something like that, that you know is coming, and ask them about that. Just because the interview tradition doesn't cover these normally doesn't mean the job doesn't require them. So regularly refresh your interview content to reflect evolving business priorities.

Okay, so in summary, your interviews likely touch on many skills, but not all of them, and only superficially at best. Number two, emerging job-critical competencies like AI are often skipped and not talked about. And then again, to fix this, audit your skill coverage, deepen the conversation around each skill, and use real-world assessments to validate those skills. All right? So if you're a manager or if you're in HR leadership,

here's your next step. Run a quick audit of your open roles, what skills are listed, and which are consistently assessed, right? So now you're going to uncover the gaps. Update your interview toolkit. Use structured questions, follow-ups, and at least one skill-based assessment. And then gather feedback. After interviews, reflect with your hiring managers. Did this reveal the right skills? What did we miss? And so hopefully over time, you'll build a hiring process that's both fairer and smarter.

And that means a better fit, better performance, and hopefully less turnover. Hope you enjoyed that. Hope you become a better interviewer because of that. And until next time we meet in the Manager Lab, do good work.