Danny was a 21 year old psychologist that was drafted to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) after his studies.
In 1951, after a short attempt as a combat soldier he was assigned to the IDF’s Psychology Unit. He quickly discovered that his commander, the chief of the psychology unit, was a chemist. That’s how he found himself, after two years of psychology studies, as the only psychology expert in the army.
Amongst the tasks he was assigned was to improve the initial interview with candidates for army service so it would better predict success in the service. By that time, the interviewers (diagnosticians) would ask whatever they want and their impression was open ended and with a “clinical” nature.
Danny took the questions and changed them to focus on candidates’ actual behaviors instead of self perceptions. For each question he attached a 1-5 scoring scale. Overall he created 4 structured scores + 1 additional score for the interviewer’s overall impression.
The interviewers hated it and told him “you are turning us into robots”
The aggregate of the 5 scores has a high predictive power - it predicts success in the army service, promotion up to lieutenant colonel level, and is being utilized up until this day.
The integration of the structured score with the more intuitive score provides enhanced prediction, especially in comparison to the intuitive score.
Our Danny is of course Daniel Kahaneman, the economist and Nobel Prize laureate for his work on judgment and decision making.
Be Danny, Go structured!

#informedecisions #assessment #bias #hiring #interviews #interviewbestpractices #skillsbasedhiring