> Why are they pathetic? The class system sucks.
They're pathetic because they don't help organizations to select people who can effectively do the job. Sure, overthrow of the class system, but even in a socialist paradise, we'll need to generate some useful social process for allocating people to various types of work.
>
> Otherwise, of course you want to figure out if you can stand being with
> someone you have to work with. Because, actually, all resumes look very
> much alike.
But you can't figure that out from an interview! It's like any social relationship: when you meet people, they're usually on their best behavior, and you can't predict how the relationship will pan out (that's just as true in corporate relationships as in romantic ones).
So who you can select based on a job interview is someone who correctly "performs" the role of being someone the interviewer can get along with; the job interview cannot correctly identify people who are genuinely a "good fit" for an organization. All a job interview can do is identify people who interview well.
I'm acutely aware of this dynamic, because our college hired a president who was selected in part due to his wonderful interview performance. He turned out to be the wrong person for the job. If we hadn't relied so heavily on the interview performance to make our decision, we would have selected a much better person.
One last thing: there are many valid job selection procedures. If we leave aside interviews, we aren't compelled to make a decision based solely on a resume! We can use work samples, evaluations from previous relevant jobs, tests that assess relevant work skills, etc. --The more quickly we abandon this corporate ritual of job selection based on interviews, the better.
Miles