Oh, the amount of ink and pixel devoted to conquering the hated job interview. A search on Amazon produces 60,000 results. Need some web advice? Just google “job interview tips,” and you’ll find thousands more articles. I stopped skimming after the first 50 pages of results. What about video advice? You can easily check out any of You Tube’s 30,000 videos on the topic, you’re sure to find some good advice there.

Bloggers are also not shy about sharing interview advice; Brazen Careerist’s Penelope Trunk devotes several entries to the topic, and we won’t even discuss the amounts of magazine editorial devoted to getting you through one of life’s most uncomfortable experiences.

So, we get the picture. Job interviews are a necessary evil, and lots of people offer advice in all different media forms.  In short, interviews suck. But maybe, just maybe, interviews are unnecessary.

Fast Company magazine contributors Chip and Dan Heath (also authors of Made to Stick) recently published an interesting article regarding the ancient tradition of the job interview. Acknowledging that the power of personality can often rule a hiring decision, the article chronicles several business and pop culture examples of seemingly wonderful interviews gone bad. Their conclusions? A 30-minute interview based on a resume review is a poor indicator of whether a person is qualified for a job.

Because of the face-to-face nature of the interview format, many qualified persons have been giving the standard “not a good fit” treatment, and never see the inside of that office again. It’s sad, because there might be a more qualified person that doesn’t quite have that winning personality. The two-page article cites a real-life story about an HR type who was ready to hire someone whose interview and resume were so spectacular, she could conceivably become a new best friend. Only after testing the person on required job tasks did the interviewer find the candidate’s work subpar.

My own interview experiences mirror the Heath’s conclusions. I’ve had a few interviews, and they were horrid experiences. What made matters worse, I had a prepared portfolio of award winning work . . . . . and nothing. No call back, no second interview, maybe a form letter saying “thanks but no thanks,” in corporate speak.

So I’ll agree with the brothers Heath on their assessment. The interview is overrated, and is not a good indicator of a potential employee’s “fit” with a company. If you can find the story on the Fast Company web site (I can’t for some ungodly reason) it’s a great read.

Postlouge:

My last interview did produce a personal letter from a vice-president of HR. It contained the typical verbiage; something about finding a candidate that was a “better fit,” something about wishing me luck on my job search, official company letterhead, all the normal stuff. For our purposes here we’ll call the VP Frank Upchurch. It’s not his real name, but the initials are accurate.

Appropriately, the rejection letter sent to me didn’t require a signature, but instead was initialed. It appears though that Frank wasn’t initialing his documents that day, because it was obvious that the letters were printed by a child. At the end of the letter were a large and very unstable F and U, separated by large dots, more like globs of ink. I guess vice-president F.U. was having his kid sit on his lap when my rejection letter crossed his desk, and that child needed some practice with his/her printing technique.

Observing this on the paper, I bristled at the message being sublimly delivered to me, then chuckled a bit at the humor of it all. Oddly enough, I haven’t been on an interview since.

So, for all of you facing interviews, good luck to you all. Lets hope some of those HR types read Fast Company magazine.

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