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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Price 
 
 
Question: 
 
I consider myself a good judge of character when interviewing 
candidates. I don't really have time to check references. Should I be 
concerned? 
 
Answer: 
 
Some folks feel like they’ve developed this intuition— this knack— for 
being a great hirer just by meeting people. In fact, usually employers 
tell us that during the first ten seconds of an appointment they’ve 
made a decision about whether or not this is a good candidate. They’ll 
go on asking more questions to try and validate that, but it’s this law 
of first impressions. 
 
Let’s look at what the research tells us. Work done at Michigan State 
University has indicated by looking at a variety of people who are 
making hiring decisions, that when they depend on the interview and 
their intuition in the interview to make the hiring decision, they’re 
successful in predicting high performance 14% of the time. I know 
you’re probably better than that.  
 
In a great hiring program there are three distinct components that 
you’re building together, and if you diminish the importance of any one 
of those three, statistically, we know that you’re going to diminish the 
chances of making a great hire. 
 
The first component of a great hiring program is that you’ve got to 
document what the person has already accomplished in the past. We 
do that by looking at their resume— and by the way, you should be 
 
 
confirming what that resume says, because we know from research 
that over 50% of resumes contain false information.  
 
You’re also going to do the reference checks. And I know, you might 
say it’s hard to get a hold of people and some are going to tell me 
more than others. But you have to give it some effort, because a lot of 
times you get valuable information by those conversations that you 
have with people who have worked with this candidate in the past. 
 
Also, background checks— more and more it’s important, whether it’s a 
drug test or criminal background. Especially if you’re talking about 
hiring somebody for a significant role, background checks should be a 
part of documenting their past history.  
 
The second component is what their future potential is. The way that 
you look at that is by doing some assessing to identify their behavioral 
style.  
 
What are the reoccurring patterns of behavior that you can use to help 
create great performance? What motivations do they bring to the job? 
Where are they going to get the internal motivation so that they don’t 
need to be supervised— they’re supervising themselves because of this 
passion that they bring to the work? What are the thinking patterns—
how do they use common sense, what kind of common judgment do 
they have? 
 
There are ways that you can measure that through assessment. So the 
second component is defining their potential in the future through 
assessments. 
 
The third component— now we get to your interview.  In the interview 
you’re looking for a few different things. You’re looking, first of all, at 
what the first impression is like. Is this somebody that you think is 
going to be able to easily build rapport and influence with the people 
Price -2- 
 
 
that it’s going to be important to work within the particular job? And 
obviously some jobs require more interaction than others. 
 
The second thing is how do you see them fitting in with your team? Do 
you see them as a great team member, or do you think that they’re 
going to stick out?  
 
The third thing is, how good of a listener are they? Because one thing 
we know is that for any employee to be great, he has to develop good 
listening skills.  
 
So you’re looking at these three components: their past history; their 
future potential; and their presence. And that’s how you do a great job 
of making a hiring decision. 
Price -3- 
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