Almost every job candidate has had the opportunity to receive some form of coaching in interviewing skills. College seniors, MBA candidates, and other students have had the opportunity to attend a course in interviewing, often with videotape feedback, offered by their placement office. Senior executives are carefully coached by the search firms that send them to you, or have gone through outplacement counseling, which includes training and advice on how to handle themselves in the interview. At the very least, anyone can go to their local bookstore and pick up a book to learn the basics of "how to be a better applicant" in an interview.

The experts who coach or instruct these job candidates are in the habit of telling their clients that the interview is a game. There is a playing field (usually your office with a desk and two chairs), a time limit (anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours), and a basic format of questions and answers. As with any other fame, there is a strong element of competition. To reach their goals, these experts say, the job candidate must reveal only those things about themselves that will make them appear to be ideal for the job and hide whatever qualities might make them appear less than ideal; it is up to the interview to find out whether the candidates are telling the truth.

Although the idea of the interview as a game is not one we endorse, by looking at it from the perspective of those who characterize it as such we will be able to learn something about what"s wrong with the interview as it is commonly practiced. It is the business of these advisors to take advantage of the interviewer"s mistakes, so they pay close attention to them.

There are dozens of "How to Get a Job" books published each year, and if you read through them what emerges is a caricature not only of the managers who are conducting interviews, but also of the individuals they are hiring -- the "ideal" candidate who is sure to please the interviewer. If what these books say has any validity at all then it would seem that when it comes to the interview, managers are hiring candidates for all the wrong reasons. Managers, it would appear, hire candidates who dress well; people who are personable and articulate; who smile a lot; who have spent time rehearsing their answers to the 10 most frequently asked questions; who have researched the company and absorbed a great deal of superficial information about it that at first glance might seem very impressive, but probably wouldn"t stand up under very close scrutiny.

Employees hired using these criteria are not necessarily the wrong people for the job, but they would be much more likely to be the right people if a more systematic method had been used to pick them. If your organization has not trained managers to make accurate pre-employment assessments, they probably are not doing as well as they could. Selection interviewing is trainable, and Swan Consultants (http://www.swanconsultants.com/) has developed a Selection Interviewing Workshop that gives participants the skills they need to make more effective and valid hiring decisions. The program presents a systematic way to hire more productive employees, reduce costly errors, and attract top candidates with an approach that stresses the development of easy-to-use tools, techniques and procedures.

The success or failure of any organization is determined by its people. To increase profits, productivity and morale, there is no better way than to hire the right person -- the first time around.