Module 3

Selecting well: structured interviews, work samples, references and a scorecard

Most managers believe that they can judge a person in an interview. The research on selection, over many decades, suggests that they cannot, at least not reliably: an informal chat tends to reward charm, similarity to the interviewer and the confidence of the candidate, none of which is the same as doing the job well. The methods that work better are less glamorous: asking every candidate the same job-related questions, scoring the answers against agreed criteria, watching people do a piece of work like the real thing and taking references that ask specific questions. This module teaches those methods, the biases that every interviewer must expect in themselves and how to bring everything together in a scorecard, which you can practise in the Hiring Scorecard tool.

General education on managing people in a legal practice, using invented people and organisations. It is not legal, employment or HR advice. Employment, discrimination, pay, working-time, dismissal and redundancy law differ between countries and change: take advice before any step that ends or changes employment.