It's hard to tell if an interviewee was good or not if you haven't seen examples

I'm on the hiring committee for my school, and today we sat for an interview, and I thought it was okay, until everyone else starting going on about how bad it was after. Then later there was a woman that was super good, and I was like, "Oh, I see, that's how it's supposed to be."
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)

I bet nobody was fooled as thoroughly as the first interviewee. Boy does he or she have a nasty surprise awaiting him or her.

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"…the USA is like Microsoft—whatever they decide to use, no matter how brain-dead it is, everyone else copies it from them, willingly or otherwise."

Yeah, that's how it usually goes. After being the head of (entirely too) many hiring committees a year ago, I was able to tell the good from the bad nearly instantly, while people who were new to the process were always waaaaay off on their judgments on who was good and who was bad. At least initially, anyway. The people who were blinded by their biases would try to play stupid about it, but I'd see through that, too.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!

The greatest trick the first interviewee ever pulled was convincing the world she didn't exist...
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

Another way to look at this process is that the newbie interviewer brings his judgments into agreement with the group. After all, when there is a clear and unambiguous standard of judgment, people will readily conform to a flagrantly incorrect consensus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

And here, the outcome measures of the hiring decisions can be vague, and the connections between candidates' behavior in unstructured interviews and said outcome measures can be unreliable, and none of the interviewers are trained. That leaves, to the newbie, consensus as the only obvious decision rule.

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"…the USA is like Microsoft—whatever they decide to use, no matter how brain-dead it is, everyone else copies it from them, willingly or otherwise."

Kylo Force posted...

The people who were blinded by their biases would try to play stupid about it…

Tell me more. What biases existed, and how could you tell that the biased people knew they were biased but were trying to hide it?

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"…the USA is like Microsoft—whatever they decide to use, no matter how brain-dead it is, everyone else copies it from them, willingly or otherwise."

I think I worded that really poorly. What I really meant was their political biases. I ran HR for the student government, where I was Director of Personnel. The hirings I was doing immediately followed the elections, and as people were elected to the board of directors, we had these new people sit in on hiring committees that were (potentially) interviewing people that had helped them in (and win) their campaign. There were some people who were very honest about it and made their best effort to remain objective (and in some cases not even support the people who were known to be associated with their campaign) but then there were others who were blatantly just trying to help those same people out. And from an HR boss standpoint, that was just... irritating.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!

Wow, I can imagine. I'm surprised there weren't rules excluding people with such conflicts of interest from hiring committees.

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"…the USA is like Microsoft—whatever they decide to use, no matter how brain-dead it is, everyone else copies it from them, willingly or otherwise."