Adverse Selection
Caption: A young job-seeker takes a seat in front of executives of ImageNet Co., one of Japan's top Internet apparel retailers, during an interview on top of Mount Fuji, August 24, 2005. The job interview was held atop Japan's highest mountain to make sure new employees have what it takes to scale the heights of business, the company said. 11 applicants out of 20 succeeded in reaching the 3,776-meter summit on Wednesday to attend the interview to try for one of four jobs on offer.
Here's an example of the kind of nonsense you can have when a company's human resource management strategy becomes a tool in the hands of the public relations department, when HR becomes a captive of PR. According to Reuters :
Some young Japanese graduates will literally have a mountain to climb to get their first job.One of the country's top Internet apparel retailers wants to make sure new employees have what it takes to scale the heights of business by interviewing them at the summit of the 12,388 foot (3,776 metre) Mount Fuji.
Some 50 hopefuls will need to be at the peak of their powers to get one of the four jobs on offer when they climb the mountain with company executives on August 24, aiming to reach the summit for a dawn interview the next day.
"We are aiming to be the No.1 Internet retailer, so the No.1 mountain in Japan is very suitable," said Yoshifumi Tsunada, head of public relations for Image Co, the parent company of ImageNet Co., which will do the hiring.
"A lot of people have said we are strange though."
There's considerable anecdotal and empirical research that suggests that performance on job interviews is not an especially reliable or valid measure of performance on the job. Thus, even if Imagenet were the Japanese equivalent of NorthFace or Patagonia, I'd still be questioning the wisdom of this component of their recruiting or selection process. It strikes me as a more than a bit exploitative. And given the fact that nine prospects didn't make it to the summit at all, it seems like a rather inefficient process, as well. I admit to some curiousity about if, where, and how Imagenet holds interviews during the winter months.
Further Reading:
The Impact of Job Complexity and Study Design on Situational and Behavior Description Interview Validity
International Journal of Selection and Assessment, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 262-273, September 2004
This paper shows that the the higher the complexity of the job to be filled, the lower is the validity of situational interviews. They also report that there was no relationship between job complexity and the validity of behavior description interviews.
International Journal of Selection and Assessment, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 108-115, June 2005
This study is a predictive validation study of the situational interview (SI) and the patterned behavioral description interview (PBDI) conducted for the criterion of teamplaying behavior. Both the SI and PBDI were valid predictors (0.41 and 0.34, respectively). Only the SI, however, had incremental validity.