Common Failures, Listed

Each of these is common, each has a detectable signal, and each is cheaper to fix than to live with.

The principles in “Common Failures, Listed” become easier to maintain when ownership and time spent are visible. Teams evaluating this detailed page can use it to coordinate the administrative work around assessment, identify stages that repeatedly expand and plan capacity, while keeping the hiring decision tied to job-relevant evidence instead of raw activity totals.

For an independent benchmark, compare the process with U.S. OPM assessment resources; the useful test is whether the local method remains job-related, proportionate and explainable.

In the design

No job analysis. Signal: requirements that nobody can justify. Fix: an afternoon with people who do the job.

Assessing what is convenient. Signal: the process measures credentials and interview performance. Fix: add one assessment resembling the work.

Too many stages. Signal: a stage that has never rejected anybody. Fix: remove it.

Proxies doing the selection. Signal: years-of-experience and degree requirements in the advertisement. Fix: name what each indicates and test that directly.

In the instruments

No rubric. Signal: assessors describe candidates rather than score criteria. Fix: three to five criteria with described levels.

Unstructured interviews carrying the decision. Signal: different candidates asked different things. Fix: a fixed question set, however short.

Take-home tasks that are real work. Signal: you would use the output. Fix: scope to hours, construct the scenario, or pay.

In the running

Uncalibrated assessors. Signal: nobody has ever scored the same answer independently. Fix: an hour with three sample responses.

Discussion before scoring. Signal: panels reach consensus quickly. Fix: score independently, then discuss.

Notes that record impressions. Signal: "seemed confident" in the record. Fix: write what was said.

Around the edges

No communication. Signal: candidates chase you. Fix: dates, met.

No measurement. Signal: nobody can produce pass rates by group. Fix: the annual audit.

The pattern

Nine of the twelve are fixed by writing something down: an analysis, a rubric, a question set, a record.

Three are fixed by removing something.

None is fixed by buying an instrument, which is where most organisations look first.

The order to fix them

If you do one thing: write the job analysis, because everything else derives from it.

If two: add a work sample.

If three: calibrate your assessors.

Those three address most of the twelve and cost about two days between them.

What to check

Which of the twelve does your process have?

Which one would be cheapest to fix?

Has anybody outside recruitment looked at the list?

And when something was found last time, did it change?

The point

Nine of the twelve common failures are fixed by writing something down, three by removing something, and none by buying an instrument..

Underlying all of this

Almost everything in this collection reduces to one discipline: write down what the job requires, assess that thing directly, record the evidence, and look at your own outcomes afterwards. None of it requires buying anything, and organisations that do those four things consistently outperform ones running longer processes built from instruments chosen before the requirements were known.

The recurring pattern

The recurring failure across every section here is the same: measuring what is convenient rather than what matters, then never checking whether it predicted anything. The check is an afternoon of work once a year, and it is the step that separates a process that improves from one that merely persists.