308. Dark Showering, Google A.I. Interviews and the M&S Cyber Attack. PLUS! Is Experience the Best Predictor of Job Performance?

0:02Coming up this week in work. Imagine if there was a simple way to wind down your body and brain after a hard day at work. Something really simple that you're probably doing every day anyway. Well, there just might be and I'll tell you all about it in my word of the week. Also this week, a story I saw. Well, we all know that most companies are trying to ban AI from job interviews and Google has come up with a solution. But it's not what you think. And in truth or lie, is experience the best predictor of job performance? Surely it is. Every job advert in the world asks for X number of years experience.

0:38Well, I've gathered the data and I've got a verdict and it's not. It depends. Nice. And in a special edition of the Workplace Surgery, we're answering questions submitted by the Business Psycho, an online forum and community for people interested in business and occupational psychology. We're going to cover work-life balance, using psychology in everyday life, and finding out the hardest work problem Leanne has ever had to solve. This is Truth, Eyes and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

1:11My name is Al, I'm a business owner, and I'm here to ask the questions you might be afraid to. And my name is Leanne, I'm a chartered occupational psychologist, and I'm here to answer them, and together we'll help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. But you know what does know something about your business?

1:43HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data. Every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

2:05Hello, hello, welcome back, welcome back. Lee, we've had literally no emails about this, but a few weeks ago you were telling us about a crow that attacked you in the park. Have we got any updates on this breaking story? Did he again? When? Like the next day. Same crow? Well, I assume so. he's had the same level of beef with me and Bobby that's for sure the mistake I didn't make this time though is I kept Peanut Big Dog on the lead so he was able to fight off the crow but it took him a couple of runs at it for it to go away really I don't know what you've done to upset them but anyway what else has been happening this week my love well this week specifically has been a big one for the old Elliot fam hasn't it yes my brother maybe he doesn't want people to know so I'll just say that there's a reasonably large family gathering this week yeah which is lovely and my little sister's come back from new zealand that's a long journey nice elliot reunion yeah we haven't had one of those for a while so now it's been a while but what else is new in your world al any crow has been after you anything you've seen that's made you lol no crows lots of things have made me lol including the story i'm going to talk about shortly um and also i just want to just want to say there is a woman in our lives called Ellie Glasson, who continually, just every, it seems like every message she sends us, she's just, it's just like helpful or useful or a great guest or she wants us to comment on something or whatever.

3:33She's just genuinely a lovely person. And I have convinced her to do an interview to tell us more about how to get, how to avoid, or basically, what would I call it? How to avoid, how to make your ideas unignorable. So that is coming out in July. So if you, it's not all about PR, it's lessons from PR. So you can take that into internal comms, you can take that into leadership. And then also we talk about thought leadership and all that kind of stuff. So I think, well, I know it's going to be a great interview and I think that a lot of people are going to learn a lot of things from it. So that'll be out on, I think, the 2nd of July.

4:03Oh, lovely. That's part of our summer content, which we're sliding towards summer really quick now, aren't we? Yeah, yeah. In Bosnia and Heres, Governor, we always joke that around about to like my birthday, 25th of May, someone just pulls a big, massive lever and summer just comes on. It jumps from like 23 degrees to like 30 plus. And that's it until September. Yeah, and our poor dogs, they're all a little bit like, what the hell is this, guys? It's like, it happened last summer. It's like, I know, I didn't think it was happening again this year. Anyway, Lee, if there's no other business, then I believe it is time for your favourite time of the week.

4:37Let's do it. Okay. Time for the news roundup. Cue the jingle. Lee, what have you seen this week? I've got a new word. Okay, talk to me. I think you're going to like this one. Right. Dark showering. Having a bathroom when you get a power cord? Pretty much, yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I thought it was going to be some clever thing, like, oh, well, you shower yourself with darkness, which allows you then to... Hello, darkness, my friend. Oh, man, some of the memes that use that music is... It's just brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. And also, I'm really also enjoying the memes where it uses the end credits from Curb Your Enthusiasm where something goes wrong and then it just starts playing the end credits.

5:17Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't think I've seen that, no. I always want to get into it and then I watch a bit and then I get a bit bored. But it's really funny. It's basically something terrible happens and then it plays the end credits. Anyway, sorry, Lee, that wasn't what we were talking about. Dark showering, is that right? Yeah, I was hoping for some more creative guesses, but you're absolutely right. Oh. So this is a well-being hack, apparently. So I saw this. This has been covered in a few newslets, actually, but it was Healthline that I quite like their coverage on. so yeah dark showering is taking a shower with the lights dimmed or switched off completely usually as part of a bedtime routine and it's not necessarily about the shower itself it's about helping your brain and body switch gears at the end of the day um and yeah it does sound like something off the tiktok but the article suggests there is actually a bit of science behind this so let me let me get this straight so you go in you brush your teeth you turn the light off and then you get into the shower yeah or maybe you dim it so maybe you light some candles or if you've got a fancy dim switch you'll turn it down or maybe you'll turn off the big light and bring in a lamp to the bathroom which is hard in the uk because there's no plugs no why is that i just think electricity and water not a good idea it's everywhere else you get plugs above sinks and other countries take electricity safety very seriously in the uk don't they it's why we have the three-pronged plug yes the and just did the fleming's left hand rule with a three hand rule let's see do you remember when you were a kid those terrifying videos used to play for you just before half term yeah at school where there's like a kid who threw a frisbee into a into a power station and then climbed up and then got electrocuted and stuff yeah my dad was an electrical engineer i had those talks well before i made it to school anyway sorry dark showering so what's the science behind it is there any so yes the article spoke to several sleep experts including a neuroscientist and sleep researcher and i really should have looked up how to say this name so here goes her first name is chelsea lovely rosh chieb rosh chieb r-o-h-r-c-h-e-i-b do you have to say it in that way rosh chieb rosh chieb say more confidently chelsea rosh chieb nice oh chelsea rosh chieb oh yeah yeah i know about it didn't she do a lot of research into a dark shower she did i'm sorry chelsea so she explains that before we fall asleep our body temperature naturally drops slightly so a warm shower temporarily raises our body temperature and then when we step out it falls again quite quickly and that mimics one of the body's natural sleep signals and can make it easier to switch off yeah it's not just about the temperature though the darkness may help too so the article explains that light plays an important role in regulating melatonin that's the hormone that helps control our sleep and wake cycle so bright light suppresses melatonin production while lower light levels encourage it so if we shower in a dimly lit room rather than under the big light in the bathroom then we're potentially giving our brain another kick that it's time to wind down you're with me keeping up yes i'm with you i'm with you I like it.

8:31I like it. I like these bedtime routines. I like them, but I never seem to, I do them like three days and I forget about them. Yeah. Yeah. And also shower at night. I don't know. I just don't know. Maybe it's a bit of a horrible thing. I don't know. I feel that in summer, I think we always forget. I think in summer, you and I do get into evening showering because I feel so sweaty by the end of the day. Lovely. But it's just, it's not, you know how it is. It's 35 degrees. We're sat in the studio with lots of lights on. That's true. It's warm. That's true. But anyway, there are some mental health benefits mentioned in the article as well.

9:08So, mental B's, that's different. Oh, is it? So, Chelsea says that dark showering may help move the nervous system into what's known as a parasympathetic state, which is associated with relaxation and sleepiness, and also knows it can help reduce cortisol, which is our stress hormone. Then we have a sleep coach called Patricia Reid, who takes it a step further. she suggests that when you remove visual distractions you naturally pay more attention to other sensations like the warmth of the water the smell of your shampoo the sound of the shower itself basically comparing it to some form of mindfulness meditation thoughts i'm for it i like it i think yeah i what do you know i've started doing quite recently not quite recently in the last sort of six eight months i now do not listen to anything when i'm going to sleep on my phone i I don't put a podcast on.

10:00I don't put a YouTube on. I used to every night. I don't know how, listen, if you do this, let us know. I'd love to know how many people would actually do this. I used to go in and I'd put a headphone and an airpod in and then I'd lie on the side and I'd watch something and I'd go to sleep. And then I just realized that it was sometimes the stuff I'd watch would be like kind of like getting me excited and then I'd be like I either couldn't sleep or I'd have weird dreams. So about six months ago I took a moment and went, no, I'm not going to do that anymore. And so now I've trained myself. It took me a long while I'll train myself just to go to bed and go to sleep.

10:27That I think is really important because I do wake up maybe about half an hour before you at most mornings. And I think you go to sleep half an hour after me. But I do feel better when I wake up. I sound a bit like I was criticizing you for watching it and me not. No, well, I will sometimes watch things in bed. But if I'm ready to go to sleep, I've got one of those sleep masks that has the built-in Bluetooth things in it. So it's very comfortable. And I'll put on a Nodcast. So I'm putting on like a history podcast. it's interesting enough that stops the dark voices inside my head but but not interesting enough that it stops me from falling asleep interesting well i'm pleased that those dark voices are being are being overcome yeah just about just about i liked it i thought do you know what i think it's it makes sense in terms of kind of the sleep the sleep science behind it and i'm not an expert in it but it makes sense to me but in in my kind of world that i know a bit more about it's kind of a ritual isn't it and we know that rituals and habits help with kind of our emotional regulation and and goal setting and all that kind of stuff so I think if you can build it in as a ritual or something you enjoy then that's brilliant and equally I think if you just if you just don't like it it's okay you know it's not that you have to do this otherwise you're gonna have a bad night's sleep there's lots of different things we can do to just regulate ourselves a little bit little nudges throughout the day my main one at the minute that took me a while to not to enjoy it is not listening to anything when i'm on the dog walk oh really don't listen to anything interesting i won't check my phone between like leaving the car and getting back to it um so yeah it's all in the ritual i think but i like that i will leave a link to the article and said experts mentioned in the show notes el what you've been seeing this week well we've seen a lot or i've seen a lot of stuff about companies who are still trying to work out how to stop candidates from using AI in job interviews.

12:18And it's becoming increasingly difficult because there's several new pieces of software out there where they will put a transparent, like a screen or a little window. Yeah, I've seen that. It was on the TickTube. And it doesn't show up on, yeah, when you share your screen or whatever. Very clever. So basically, people are trying to work out how not to use AI in job interviews. Google has kind of decided to go in the opposite direction and not only let them, but encourage them. So starting later this year, this article was in, do you know, I don't know where it's in. Sorry, check this for show notes.

12:48Didn't write it down. So starting later this year, candidates are going to be allowed to use an AI assistant during Google's code comprehension interview. This is where they analyze real code bases or they try and find bugs or they improve the performance. And the interviewers will be explicitly evaluating AI fluency, i.e. prompt engineering or debugging skills or whether you spawn up new agents or whatever. So, of course, the AI they're going to be using is Gemini, naturally. So Google's has Gemini. Google's now testing whether you can use Google's AI to get a job at Google. So we're getting a little bit Google-ish there.

13:25But to be fair, there is some logic because Google, amongst a lot of other companies, are saying 75 % of its new code is already AI generated. So they think it's more important to test people on how they can work with AI rather than how they can just do their job without AI and pretend it's like 2019. Thoughts, Lee? Yeah, it's like a little work sample test that, isn't it? Right, so just if someone's not heard of work sample because you're big on these, you're bullish on work sample tests. I do enjoy a work sample test. What's a work sample? It's basically where you'd give somebody a task that is the same as a task that will be done in the job you're recruiting for.

14:03So coding using an AI assistant or writing a blog or, you know, whatever it is. is basically taking a small task from the actual job you're recruiting for and getting candidates to execute that task and rating who does it best. That makes sense. We'll talk a bit more about that actually in our Truth or Lie. Interesting. Interesting. Well, just to summarise this then, one executive put it quite well. Let me just read from the article. It says, banning AI from interviews is like asking a kid to take a math test without a calculator. I'm going to push back on that because back when I was doing some of my math stuff, we weren't allowed to calculate.

14:43But then we did do, when we were doing like cosine and sine and trigonometry and stuff, we did have to have a calculator. But there was one GCSE paper, wasn't it, where you couldn't use a calculator? Yeah, you couldn't use a calculator. Yeah, yeah. I suppose some people might argue and go, well, who's getting the job here? Is it AI or is it the person who's using AI? But I suppose the counter argument is that in the future we'll all be using AI, so why not let them do it in the interview? Yeah, and what they actually seem to be testing the people at Google is, it's like you said, that prompt, prompt, engineering is that what it's called and how you use it to effectively to do the code because there could be somebody that i don't know goes through three or four prompts to get to the correct code and somebody goes through 20 that's going to tell you a lot about how somebody thinks as well as how they use ai so i think something like that it's not i don't think i think that's actually a really good idea i think the tricky one isn't it is when when people are using those those screens to answer interview questions and it's just AI-generated content being read back.

15:43That's a different issue, I think. Yeah, maybe in the next couple of years, we'll just assume that everyone's using AI and then you have to prove in your interview that you're not using AI by not using AI. Or something wild will happen and we'll go back to in-person interviews. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Yeah. Anyway, what else have you seen, my love? Should employees lose their bonuses because the company got hacked. Oh, go and tell me more. So this is from The Times and it's about the fallout from the very famous, infamous, not sure of the difference, cyber attack. Different spelling.

16:18Yes, the cyber attack that hit Marks and Spencers earlier this year. Do you remember? Yeah, there was no prawn sandwiches. Yeah, everyone was freaking out. Freaking out. So M &S has confirmed that no employee will receive a bonus this year and that's kind of all the way through the levels. in terms of shop floor staff, store managers, and the executive team and the board. Right. So it's 63 ,000 employees. Is that how many people work for M &S? Wow, it's a big outfit. Yeah, so M &S has basically said the decision is purely because of the financial impact of the cyber attack. So Chief Executive Stuart Machen said that You can't say that word, can you?

17:03The remuneration committee and executive team agreed not to operate the bonus scheme this year, adding no one in M &S will receive one, including me and the executive team. He also acknowledged the effort that employees have put into everything during the crisis and saying that people had worked harder than ever during those challenging days. and the numbers basically is the only reason. So M &S reported an annual pre-tax profit that fell by 28.8 % from 511 to 364 million pounds. The cyber incident itself cost the company 131 million. Oh my God. That was through system recovery, risk management measures, specialist advisory fees and just the general disruption.

17:51it wiped off more than a billion dollars of the company's market value oh man i do feel so that's that's horrible yeah it's awful isn't it it's awful so when you look at the numbers it doesn't really come as much as a surprise um but despite all that amnes have said that business has returned to sales and profit growth in the second half of this year and expects growth um profit growth to resume um next year within the current financial year um so what do we think on one hand is there something admirable about leadership teams taking the same hit as everybody else nobody gets a bonus not even the ceo is this good or is it the employees who are working hard and getting punished thoughts i i obviously think it's good like you you can see some companies going no one's getting a bonus and then the ceo gets like 3.8 million like in like in boeing or something like that you can see that i think it's good that they've gone right nobody's getting bonuses i think it would have been better in my opinion if you're listening mark suspenses i'm happy to come and be one of those special advisories who charge you millions of pounds to have done a deferred bonus and to say okay look you've worked really hard we can't pay it right now but business is going back to normal we're going to defer this bonus for 12 months and assuming we hit this number these numbers you will get the bonus for that year and this year that would have felt more fair to me yeah i mean i guess though their concern might be that they can't absolutely promise it if something else happens but they could make a contingent on the um on profit couldn't they true that yeah yeah true that in terms of a performance metric hit is going to trigger this yeah good idea am good idea i'm sure i'm typing an email to them right now yeah i think on one hand it is good you're showing that example of what psychologists would call um organizational justice or procedural justice where there's transparency over how decisions are made and it's equally you know impacting everybody so that's that's really good but i agree that that would have maybe been a better idea or some other i guess form of of reward or thank you might have been good but i guess when you've got 63 000 employees anything's quite expensive isn't it typical things are usually like the executive team would take a cut in salary to allow for bonuses or people be given extra time off but yeah that's that's a big impact when you've got that many many staff and you've had that kind of start to the year again yeah well i'm curious whether you could insure against that so did that really come off there off the off their top off their bottom line allegedly allegedly wow tough yeah and it won't be the last wasn't um wasn't ford or something or a motor company didn't they get like yeah it was now is it land rover Yeah, it was Land Rover.

20:41Yeah, it was Jaguar Land Rover. Yeah, yeah. And they got screwed, didn't they? Yeah. And then isn't there something now with, is it, who's the Chachi Beauty people? Open AI. Open AI. They now developed something that basically people, they haven't released it because it means that people could basically hack from with very simple equipment. Yeah, not Mythos, Glassdoor. I don't remember, but I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. I think there's two new supermodels, not supermodels, supermodels, like one's, I'm sure it's called Mythos or something like that. And then OpenAI's got that one and apparently they're just like the world's best thing, but they've got a project called Glasswing, anthropological project called Glasswing where only certain people can come in and join it because it's that powerful.

21:26Or it's just a really clever marketing, a marketing thing before their IPO later on this year that they want people to think, wow, there's something really, really big coming down the line. This isn't just any model. This is a super model. this isn't just any cyber attack that's really angry we should have missed the thing any any other business before we go to a break no let's go fabulous okay so you know you know the score after the break truth or lie this is the point where i ask leanne is this true or is this a lie see you in a second welcome back to truth or lie it's the time of the week we'll take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research actually backs it up and the reason if you've not this before normally i say i ask the end a question she'll go well as a psychologist i have to say it depends she said she's not going to say that this week very very exciting so this week we're talking about experience specifically this idea that the more experience a candidate has the better they'll perform at the job so you often see this in job ads don't you like five years minimum ten years preferred and it does feel really intuitive because if you give a job to someone who's done it before it feels like well it feels like a really safe choice but does the research actually support this so leanne is experience the best predictor of performance excellent question thank you a few definitions before we dive in you know i like to just put some some you know context in terms of what we're talking about here when researchers measure experience they are usually counting years yeah so how long someone has done a particular type of work the formal name for this is actually called a training and experience rating and most people will basically use like a point system so no years certain qualifications add it up points rank candidates job performance in most studies means supervisor ratings so a manager's going how well somebody does their job and in terms of predicting one another it's basically looking at correlation so what's the correlation between experience and future job performance.

23:33In terms of that, in hiring research, a correlation of 0.3 is considered useful. Remember that. 0.3. 0.3 is good. 0.3 is good. And just to confirm, 0.4 is even better and 0.2 is not as good. Yeah. Got it. And anything below 0.2 is pretty weak. Right. Okay. Okay. So what is the case for experience? Do you know what? There is actually some evidence behind this. So a 2022 study, which was a meta-analysis. What's that, Al? Analysis of multiple studies. Yes, it is. It looked at experience, but it looked at experience at a team level rather than an individual level. So this was from a psychologist called Guzzo and some of his friends.

24:16They found that... Called what, sorry? Guzzo. G-U-Z-Z-O. It just sounds like a... Guzzo. Maybe Italian, I don't know. Oh, right. See, I was thinking more like the Muppets sort of character of the Muppets. he's just my northern twang that isn't it gazzo is that better yeah much better talk about that from now on they found that that basically work teams or units where people had been in their roles longer consistently outperformed newer teams and that was on like proper concrete stuff so financial return productivity service quality as a collective experience does deliver something very very valuable there is also evidence that it holds up for individuals under the right conditions so mcdaniel and colleagues pulled 132 studies covering over 12 000 workers across a whole range of jobs and industries as well and what they found is when the people being assessed didn't have much experience to begin with then experience was a meaningful differentiator so basically entry level roles if somebody's got a bit of experience versus non-important a correlation of 0.29 so almost 0.3 nearly that magic 0.3 yeah meaning explained around eight percent of the variation in terms of who performed better so it is a genuine genuine signal then we have a separate large-scale study by again van indeking i'm gonna go with okay it was is it a dutch person van iteking sure might be afrikaans and colleagues as well found that experience also gives people a head start in the early months of a new role and that was a correlation of 0.22 so just above that 2.2 um say two again the and okay that's for around five percent of the variation in early performance and when prior close prior experience closely mirrored the demands of the new job it predicted training performance considerably more strongly so yes experience does predict predict performance and the relationship is positive and it is real but it is modest and it does fade quickly as we're about to see in our against okay so what we're saying is people have got experience uh people have experienced roughly between 0.22 and 0.29 in terms of correlation of of of what am i saying leanne yes yes absolutely right assuming that you are looking at a collective right or entry-level roles got it okay thank you for saving me there so what's the what's the argument against so the same study that found that experience gives people that head start in the first few months of a new role also looked at experience more generally so a little reminder this was 81 independent studies covering more than 11 ,000 employees.

27:07And they asked, does the experience someone have before joining an organization predict how well they'll perform once they're in their role? So this wasn't entry-level roles, this was generally. That correlation was 0.06. 0.06, oh right, so that's much, much smaller. So pre-hire experience explained less than 1 % of the variation in job performance, less than 1%. Right. which is pretty bad for something that drives quite a lot of hiring decisions in the real world the researchers really actually did try and find an effect here they went to some effort so they also looked at experience in the same or very similar jobs so you know the cases where you might expect that experience to matter the most the correlation did nudge up al oh good okay but to 0.07 oh so it just like more like yeah so still less than one percent they even looked at measures designed to assess the quality and relevance of experience not just the quantity it was still weak and the small advantage the experienced hires showed in their first few months basically disappeared after a year because the people around them simply learned how to do their job that makes sense yeah yeah so the the researchers basically said the experience in in one organization doesn't travel well to another and the same job title can mean quite different things systems cultures ways of working they can all vary so basically having done something before tells you almost nothing about how well somebody did it so basically logging time doesn't necessarily mean you're developing a genuine skill oh you see now i'm starting to get it now i think so i immediately thought experience i assumed experience like oh well obviously they're good at it all you're saying with experiences i've i've done five years i kept this job yeah and that's it you might not been any good at it but you kept it exactly so you're adequate at best exactly potentially okay got it sorry carry on yeah which actually no it is it because it's you just take it for granted don't you that's what it means and adam grant talks about this in i talk about this book all the time i really enjoyed it's one of my i think it's my favorite adam grant book hidden potential and he basically said that most recruitment processes are built around the execution score so what somebody has already achieved but almost entirely ignore the degree of difficulty so two candidates might arrive with similar experience on paper but one of them might have had to go through significantly more or overcome more hurdles that the CV doesn't capture so I think the example he used in his book is if you've got a degree from the same university you might have somebody who is middle class goes to good schools two parents at home very stable home life compared to somebody who's from a low socioeconomic background who had caring responsibilities whilst going to school missed a significant amount got the same grades from the same university you'd think they're the same but actually if you could dig deeper you'd realize that one person was probably a lot more intelligent and um tenacious to get that yeah another one mcdaniel and colleagues found the same thing as well in terms of how organizations formally score experience so that common approach that i mentioned awarding points for years on the job and qualifications that produced a validity of 0.11 oh so a third of what we were talking about before yeah so it's just hitting 1 % of performance.

30:38So basically the system that most organizations use to filter candidates is barely better than picking at random. Wow. Yeah. Which raises the question, which I said we'd come back to when you asked me about works and full tests. If experience doesn't predict performance very well, what does? Well, luckily we have over a hundred years of research into this. It's the most, it's the most sciency of science we have in psychology. It's our whole foundation so schmidt erwin schaefer should be a band pulled together centuries worth of hiring research to find out what actually predicts performance now looking at everything they were they were kind of generous they said experience explained about 2.5 percent of the difference so it's not quite reaching the kind of five to eight percent we saw in in some studies but we're not kind of below that that one percent so 2.5 is where we land in terms of how predictive it is But what's more interesting about the study is what they did find to be good predictors.

31:38And some of these, I'm not even sure business owners would have considered, including in their recruitment process. So a general mental ability test. So how quickly someone can learn and solve problems. That explains over 42 % of future job performance. 42 %? See, I choked up my cough. 42 %? 42%. Wow. Yeah. This is even more simple. A structured interview. So not just sitting down with a candidate and asking them random questions that pop in your head. A structured interview where every candidate is asked the same questions and scored consistently, that explains around 34%. Wow. Integrity tests.

32:16So that's when we look at how if somebody is reliable or conscientious, that explains around 21%. Work sample tests, so giving the candidate an actual piece of work to do, is around 11%. academic grades is about 11.6 percent a candidate's life history and background so what adam grant was talking about in terms of hidden potential 12 so the background and life history explains more than academic grades interesting can i ask you a quick question yeah so if if you like some of these numbers here if i took three of them and did three things as three parts of a of an interview process am i more like is that going to be much better like significantly better than just doing one of them yeah yes can you add them to i mean you can't have them together because they go to more than 100 but yeah yeah they're weighted and there is a way that that psychologists do this so yes if you did a general mental ability test a structured interview and a work sample test the highest of those is is general mental ability at 42 percent if you add them together you're Probably looking at the answer in like 60 % plus.

33:24Right. Yeah. Why aren't people doing this? I don't know. I don't know, Al. Anyway. To quote Eliza Doolittle, I'm tired and upset and I'm trying to care a little less.

33:38Didn't think we'd get Eliza Doolittle on the show. Ah, dear. Yeah. Other things that just in terms of someone's genuine interest match the demands of the role, that's 10%. So yeah. Do you like paying attention to excruciating detail? in this compliance job that isn't required yeah i do cool that's about 10 reference checks the bits that people just skip over at the end seven percent really yeah um and what's interesting at the very very bottom zero percent which and this wasn't the most ridiculous so um analyzing handwriting for example is about like 0.5 or something like that there's one thing that's 0%.

34:14Any guesses what you think it is? Oh, appearance or? Yeah, or age. Yeah, so age explains 0%. So it doesn't really matter if you're judging somebody for not having any experience or having far too much overqualified. You're wrong. Absolutely wrong. Age has no impact in terms of job performance as being a reliable predictor of job performance. So just to kind of just make sure I'm on the right page here, if you are using age to decide whether you should recruit someone it's got zero percent chance of of helping you yeah um if you use something like a job uh what was the job task thing you the thing you yeah work sample test was about 11 or something yeah and then the general mental ability test was about 40 yeah what was the what was the experience again where would that fit 2.5%.

35:07Wow, really? 2.5%. This is significant. Yeah. And the one I want you to take home, listener, if you're thinking about your recruitment process, a structured interview, 34%. Wow. You're already doing interviews. All you need to do is just a little bit of work to make sure the questions are actually measuring the skills and knowledge that's needed for the job and you've got a standard way of scoring candidates' answers. That's going to get you to 34%. And as you said, Al, adding that together with something like a work sample test, and if you can, some form of cognitive test or integrity test, it's going to tell you a lot.

35:46So yeah, in terms of a verdict, experience is the best predictive performance, truth or lie? It is a lie. It's a big, fat lie, Al. And it's not, you know, experience doesn't count for nothing. It does, in the right conditions. it might tell you a little something but as that kind of main filter in a hiring decision or CV sifting the research doesn't back it up at all at best 2.5 percent most of the research suggests it's lower than one percent predictive of how somebody will perform in the role and that does have a real cost to businesses which is why I get frustrated with organizations who struggle with hiring and don't bring in a psychologist to help them with it is because this is so fixable it's the easiest thing to fix so yeah go and do it because you're missing out on great great candidates just because you don't think they have enough years experience on on their CV not realizing it tells you nothing almost nothing about their future job performance and meanwhile you've got other things that will will predict performance much better your structured interviews measuring integrity that you can put into your hiring process and it'll actually improve the quality of hires you'll make these tools do exist just the most organizations aren't using them i love this i love this so it's a definite line not it depends i do have a question and i don't expect you to have the answer to this but just on the off chance you might know let's see yeah if someone if i've got two people and i'm not judging it based on their experience but I got two people one person who's got five years well both got five years experience in a particular role one's got five-year experience at one company one's got five-year experience in total over three companies is there any kind of like is there a benefit to going for the someone who's jumped around or is that still we're still only talking one percent probably only talking one percent because don't forget these are meta-analysis so it would have looked at all these variables as well and not found any kind of the only one was that early entry level roles that had a little bit of an effect so I don't know for sure but from what I know I'm going to say no that wouldn't matter because it comes down to the same thing unless you're actually digging into the actual experience that has developed certain skills then it's fairly useless one could argue that working in certain innovative organizations like Google might tell you a bit about it but also it doesn't because you could have somebody who's worked at Google and hasn't absorb this creativity and way of thinking so that's why we need to test for that which will come down to your work sample test which will come down to general mental ability structured interviews in terms of the skills they develop during said years of experience lee brilliant uh links in the show notes i'm guessing if there's anything to link to i'll leave a link to the hundred year research meta-analysis because it's very interesting very interesting okay i think you you hr nerds are gonna love that okay on to my favorite time of the week the world famous weekly workplace surgery where i put your questions to leanne leah i have three questions but today we're doing something a tiny bit different as i mentioned at the top the questions come from the business psycho now isn't it just the best name in the world it really is i i wasn't sure what leanne told me i was like uh are we saying this right no no so if you don't know the online forum a community for people interested in business and occupational psychology we have featured one before the community was created by mary Lu who wanted to build a space where people can ask questions share ideas learn from experienced practitioners and have honest conversations about the science and practice of work that's what it says here anyway so the forum is currently live and it's distracting everyone from psychology students to early career practitioners experienced consultants HR professionals workplace leaders anyone who just likes the name Mary recently asked Leanne didn't she if she did if you'd answer a few questions from the members of the community so we have got three of them today do you want to start with question number one go for it so question number one can business and occupational psychology skills be applied outside work and in everyday life yes is that the end of the question it's this it's the short answer yes they absolutely can i'm sure anyone listening who has done a psychology degree or is doing a psychology degree will know that you become so introspective and start analyzing yourself in ways that feel very uncomfortable you start to question your parents your family everyone around you every marriage you've ever had ever how you've been treated at work realizations oh my gosh it wasn't me it's a it's an interesting interesting thing um so yes are they are they actually useful in everyday life rather than just kind of building this anxiety of how traumatized you are yes yes they do do you know what it is it's things like you just collect information it's like um we talked about um what was it dark showering yeah that's something that will pop up in in my world so i'll read and go oh i might try that not listening to music when you're walking the the dog is meant to be better for emotional regulation and recovery so you'll try that so you come across lots of different things that you'll just start to integrate into your life in a way that you didn't really realize things like listening skills asking really good questions the ethics are baked in to your personal life as well in terms of confidentiality you probably won't gossip as much or you know you'll hold on to people's secrets you'll constantly think about the broader impacts of of change on the world it's why I feel really uncomfortable about AI it's not that I'm afraid of the technology advancing I'm really concerned about the ethical impact or the detrimental impact on the individual so yeah the ethical concerns I have around AI are very very real so yeah and I think the one thing that I think is going to have a massive impact on your everyday life is being very curious, being very open and being very intentional around forming opinions.

42:02So where's the data? So things like politics, for example, it drives me nuts that people go, oh, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican, I'm Labour, I'm Conservative. It's like, how do you know like forever? parties change and policies change and I want to see the data before every election and go well that feels a bit more me I'll go with that one so I think you will become that kind of naturally it depends you will hold very strong opinions on things that you have the data for and I think in terms of organizational life even if you don't pursue a career in organizational psychology after doing your master's or your degree it's these skills that are so important it's that critical thinking it's looking for the data looking for the evidence holding space for people to have open conversations ask really great questions appreciate the input of other people and the impact you have on other people you just can be a really positive organizational citizen in the world right well i've got another one for you leanne question number two what's the hardest workplace problem you've ever had to solve leanne oh it's a good one it is i really had to think about this one and i'd start by saying there's no workplace problem that is easy to solve but there are some that are more simple like recruitment for example is a bit more simple because we've got very tried and tested it's very process driven it's yeah it's it's easier i think the hardest workplace problem i had to solve in that i felt completely out of my depth but had enthusiasm and a plan and went in was a turnaround I had to do on a contract when I was working in Welfare to Work so I'd been promoted to national manager I've been managing this contract in the northwest I got promoted to national manager to also take on the contracts in the east of England and in the southwest of England and the southwest was struggling some they'd gone through a number of managers they'd gone through staff they had turnover problem they weren't engaging customers very well their performance was the lowest of any provider in the region which was particularly embarrassing because the our company itself was a prime contract holder right so it was optics was not not great and and you know the southwest is a very different place culturally as well so you have to be a little bit sensitive to going into into that world so I went down to Cornwall and was just kind of like right let's just have a full-on morning of moaning um I called it I called it at the time I don't I'm not sure if I said this to staff but I definitely said this to my my manager we're gonna do some shit posting and I was like we're basically just gonna get it all out we're gonna get it all out in the morning and we're gonna talk about things that that are bugging us and this is actually based on um uh a agile scrum technique called three buckets where basically you you just get all the stuff out in a way that feels constructive so you basically have a whole brainstorm dump where you ask every team member to write down what their frustrations are or say them out loud if they feel comfortable in my scenario they were very comfortable to say it out loud they could not wait to say it out loud so I'd write them down and then we'd basically label I did on a whiteboard you could actually do with physical buckets if you wanted to three categories and that was our afternoon activity so our morning was completely about ranting raving getting everything off your chest in the afternoon we went to more kind of solutioning so one bucket was the control bucket so things that the team or I had control over the influence bucket so things that that I could impact as a manager or as a team we could influence so it's not guaranteed but we might be able to have conversations in the organization and a third was a no control bucket like there is nothing we can do like it's just written into the terms of the of the contract and how we work and how we operate and we can't change that so in the afternoon we went through this exercise and and made the decision that the no control we were going to put in that big red balloon and let go the influence bucket was my responsibility to try and get moving and the team control bucket we talked about who was going to take responsibility for that with support from me and my director to get things moving we probably lost i think we had a team of 12 and we lost two members of staff because they couldn't get on board with the change and it was a good outcome because those members of staff had had been causing some issues for a while because of their understandable frustrations but they just couldn't get past it and couldn't get over it so we did have some turnover which of course we had to then recruit back in and and just start to build this contract up again from the ground up as a as a new person in a area culturally very different from the northwest of england i'm sorry how am i boring i'm trying to hide my yaw i'm so sorry i'm out of water a bit thirsty and i get and I get yawning I'm trying so hard carry on Lee I'm so sorry so yeah it took it took months in terms of little cultural nudges behavioral nudges building morale building belief injecting some fun back into the work and what what we did working with customers genuinely changing lives what a privilege so it's getting those those translating those values of the organization as well into what it looked like in the team and what should be driving us forward it took a long time we did lose some people but ultimately the turnaround happened performance went up we got some incredible people working in in the business that had been there but just weren't clicking or underappreciated or didn't have the space to shine they went on to do incredible things get promoted themselves onto other contracts and just a general feeling that that rippled to other providers in the contract as well that this was fun we'd share good news stories we'd share things that we were trying knowledge sharing with other people outside of our company on the same contract just this whole ethos and basically what underpinned our culture was this belief that we're changing lives and what privilege and we need to do our absolute best to make that happen that's probably the hardest one I had to solve for a variety of reasons but I think what's always good is that any problem you are going to experience as an org psych you're never going to have the initial answer to you're not going to have the answer to i could have gone in there going i'm going to change this and i'm going to change that and thank goodness i came along but i didn't i went to the team on my first time went what's occurring tell me everything that's just awful and we built a plan together from there and that's what made the difference i love that i love that i must have heard that story half a dozen times um and i love hearing it brilliant okay and it was called shitposting that's what that's the officially where you're coming down and you're going to call it a shit posting technique i think it's actually called a three buckets technique which is part of of scrum agile world i prefer shit bucket okay final question is work-life balance actually realistic in competitive industries so i'm guessing we're talking like finance and that sort of thing is that what we're saying yeah i mean there was no more to the to the question than that but that's kind of how i'd interpret it as well so things that would be like the big four for example finance roles arguably tech now with the amount of layoffs we're seeing is work-life balance actually realistic it all depends on what you want to achieve and how important work-life balance is to you I think work-life balance is a term that kind of bugs a lot of people now I've heard some people talking more about work-life integration which because we've got this kind of always on kind of connectivity I think work-life integration is also a better a better lens but more from the point in terms of where is my energy coming from how is my cup being filled and is that coming from outside of my work as well as inside it so something happens to my work life I'm not going to be in this spin I've lost all sense of meaning and purpose it really comes down to what you want to achieve I'll be honest in times where I've been building my career, wanting to progress quickly, wanting to develop quickly, wanting to chase those salary bands.

50:21I didn't have the best work-life balance, but there were some things that were sacred to me. Weekends were always sacred. I might work late into the night during the week, but I would never work on a Saturday and Sunday. It's that boundary that you set. There's going to be, you know, people out there screaming at their phone going, well, I couldn't take Saturday and Sunday off when I was hustling it's like yeah well I worked in small businesses I worked at times in startups I didn't work for like your JP Morgans that have got this type of of kind of hustle culture I didn't work for organizations like Google who have you know a very clear idea of of what it takes to survive in that organization so it all comes down to what you want and what competitive looks like I was more competitive with myself and my peers so rather than in terms of being in a competitive industry I was very clear of certain boundaries I would set and like the majority of professionals I also burnt out and crashed and burned because I didn't have work-life balance and I wasn't aligned my values weren't aligned with the organizations I was working for and that ultimately derailed my career for a time but also then took me on the path I was meant to be on and took me to where I am you know as a starting place for where I am today I'm not saying that in terms of burnout being a badge of honor more as a reassurance to anyone that's burning out you will recover it's okay so I guess that's a really long rambling answer to say that yeah it probably isn't very realistic in competitive industries but what is realistic is asking yourself why you want to be in those competitive industries what you're getting from it either in the short or long term in terms of pay in terms of lifestyle in terms of meaning in terms of development and is that worth the impact it is inevitably going to have on your mental health and really what the long-term goal is in terms of what work and life looks like for you do you want to have a family do you want to travel the world those goals need to be aligned otherwise you won't have any kind of work life balance or indeed any kind of work life satisfaction and that's probably a bit more important in your probably in any point of your career right having that balance of satisfaction but particularly in your early career what's the trade-off is it worth it it's a lovely summary and i think competitive industries tend to you think about finance law um sales that kind of thing um there's nothing wrong with going no there is no life work work life balance in it and i'm going to do it for five years and then i've got a path to leave the problem is when you're when you're turning 45 and you're going i want work life balance but i also want to progress quickly in this industry it's like saying I'm going to be a professional footballer but I'm not going to retire at 29 or 30 like everyone else does.

53:20I'm going to go on to my 60s. No you're not. So yeah, short term busy for long term lazy is one of the things that I often say. Yeah, definitely. And the thing is as well, it's not to say that there aren't organisations out there in traditionally competitive industries that aren't doing things differently. Thrive Law springs to mind in terms of a law firm that's operating very differently and I think this is where our Gen Z colleagues are particularly good at scrutinizing culture and values and how that all plays out so there's absolute things you can do to find a role in a competitive industry with an organization that does nurture more of a work-life balance so there's things that you can do but I think you're right and I've heard lots of people do that before going in with a plan I'm going to work in this job for five years to save this amount of money which will enable me to go and do this and this and how that contributes to actual life goals, work and life.

54:12So I think if you are going to do it, like you say, what's the plan? What did you say? Short term? Short term busy for long term lazy. Nice. Yeah, I mean, just watch Suits. You see what happens. They work 120 hours as associates. Then they go, then they turn into Harold Spector. Where's that come from? Harold Shipman. No, into Harvey Spector, who just strolls in at nine o 'clock in the morning. And yeah, so yeah. Okay, that's it for this workplace, this week's workplace surgery. Massive thank you to Mary Lou over at the Business Psycho for letting us have these questions. If you're interested in workplace psychology or leadership or culture or wellbeing or how to spell Mary's surname, maybe you should go over to thebusinesspsycho.framer.website forward slash forum.

54:56And if you'd like to connect with Mary directly, we'll also put her LinkedIn profile in the show notes along with that URL, of course. As always, if you've got a workplace dilemma yourself or you'd like to tackle it on the show, head on over to truthliesandwork.com and send it our way or yeah just just look at the show notes in this thing and you'll see a way to get to get in touch okay so this Thursday we are joined by Sean O'Shea Sean Sean Sean dude you have been so patient we recorded this interview way back in I think around about the end of February beginning of March and since then he's launched a brand new company he's still got craft your culture but he's got luck on as well really interesting guy I also used to work for X, X Microsoft, so it gives a little bit of an impact on that.