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Evidence-Based Hiring: Why Hiring Is Broken and How Data Can Fix It

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Would you hire an unknown singer without hearing them sing? Even with "five years of singing experience" in their resume and a diploma from "Epic Singers School," you would still like to hear them, wouldn't you?

Surprisingly, most companies do the opposite and base hiring decisions on candidate claims and attained degrees. The good news is that you can detect the top employees other companies are missing by applying Evidence-Based Hiring, a new and scientific process. Step-by-step examples of job ads, questions, tests, and interview scripts will teach you how to remove hidden biases, ask the right questions, and create completely automated screening tests. As a result, you will gain a competitive edge over your rivals, hire fantastic employees, and save time at every step of your hiring.

Zeljko Svedic founded TestDome, the employee-screening company that helped thousands of companies--such as ABB, eBay, and PayPal--hire better. You're next. Read this book and start finding people like Holmes!

107 pages, Paperback

Published July 21, 2018

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Zeljko Svedic

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for Vicente S..
41 reviews
August 4, 2021
Short, precise, and good tips.

Key takeaways: Expect to find yourself with probably 20% of people good, 60% go by,
and 20% couldn’t possible qualify for the job (bell curve).

We’re All Biased..

Focus on applying predictive validity as a statistical measure to hire: Job knowledge tests, Peer rating, General mental ability (GMA) tests, Employment interviews (structured), Work-sample tests.

Bloom’s taxonomy is an important tool for your screening
because: The higher the question in the hierarchy, the more domain knowledge the candidate needs to demonstrate.

• Remembering: recall a word in a foreign language.
• Understanding: understand text or audio.
• Applying: use a language to compose an email or to
converse with people.
• Analyzing: analyze a piece of literature.
• Evaluating: discuss which book has better literary
value.
• Creating: write a poem, essay, or fictional story.

How to conduct an interview:

Structured interviews enforce a rigid process:

• There is a list of specific questions.

• Every candidate is asked the same questions, in the same order.

• The interviewer writes down the score for every ques- tion, based on a predefined criteria.

• Candidate answers are written down or recorded.

• The company keeps records of all interviews for future analysis.






Interviews don’t require the effort of just one person, they require collective effort to get right. Generally, having multiple people involved in the interview process is better.

A. Have multiple people on the interview. One leads the questioning and conversation, while the others listen and make notes. After the interview finishes, they compare impressions and discuss the differences between them.

B. Note-taking by a single interviewer. Just the simple task of taking notes makes interviewers more ratio- nal and unbiased. People will rarely write, “I don’t like this candidate.” They are more likely to provide an explanation, such as, “Often the candidate didn’t answer the question directly.” These notes can later be reviewed by another interviewer as the basis for eliciting a second opinion.

C. Multiple rounds of interviews, done by different inter- viewers. For example, Google has at least four rounds of interviews with different members of the team. Any interviewer has the power to veto a candidate if they conclude the applicant is unfit for the job. Often com- panies undertake interviews with multiple levels of the organization—e.g., HR, project management, a departmental boss, etc.

D. Recording audio or video of the interview. If the can- didate agrees, you can record the interview. Other interviewers can then review these at their own con- venience, and you have a detailed archive for future reference.




Plan - Execute - Measure - Improve cycle.


Planning is deciding what methods to use, what skills are necessary, and what questions to ask.

Executing is doing the screening rounds.

Measuring is writing down all candidate answers and scores.

Improving is analyzing what is good and what is bad in your process, and changing your hiring standards for the next round.
Profile Image for Filip Kis.
55 reviews12 followers
February 3, 2019
Clear, to the point and very helpful

If you're ever in a position to hire, I would strongly recommend this book.

Full disclosure, I know Zeljko personally, so there might be a slight bias in my rating. However, I'm not the one that easily agrees with others and when Zeljko was telling me about his hiring process I was sceptical to some aspects.

After reading his book though, I'm convinced. In a very clear and data based manner he explained why certain commonly used and intuitive approaches to hiring (e.g. starting with reviewing CVs) don't work.
1 review4 followers
October 7, 2018
If you're hiring for your company, or if you're a candidate in the process, read this book to learn which selection methods have been scientifically proven, and which haven't. You'll also learn how to set up good work-sample tests and structured interviews.
It's focusing on the selection process, making sure the decision made by the hiring manager eliminates bias as much as possible.
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