Sigmund Freud had a wealthy client in the midst of a hiring decision with two possible courses of action: Hire the executive candidate or not. Freud suggested she toss a coin. The client was furious and asked if that was what she was paying him to do. He explained that whichever answer came up, she'd know how she really felt about her course of action.

A study by John and Rhonda Hunter at The University of Michigan analyzed the usefulness of an interview in accurately predicting later job success. The results? The typical interview increases the likelihood of choosing the best candidate by less than 2 percent. In other words, if you just flipped a coin, you'd be correct 50 percent of the time. If you added an interview, you'd be right only 52 percent of the time.

How can you increase your odds of interviewing success and hire a great candidate who successfully contributes to your company's health for the long term? Start with structure and consistency, mix in a little Freudian psychology, and always include the essential ingredient known as learning agility. Many people debate whether interviewing is a science or an art. Done well, it's both.

Structure and Consistency
Structure and consistency help you objectify an otherwise subjective process. Creating structured interview questions with a pre-defined rating scale allows you to quantify a candidate's answers mathematically and compare them to others' responses more objectively.

Questions that work well for quantifying and comparing include:

1. What relevant experiences and/or educational background have you acquired that apply to this role?
2. When have you led a major team project and achieved outstanding results?

Quantifiable questions allow for a formalized rating scale. Verification of answers ensures the truth. For example, a rating of 1 might represent no success-based experiences or lack of educational training. A rating of 4 may identify a candidate who meets and exceeds the job requirements. Likewise for the second question, a 1 may represent inadequate levels of project management or missed budgets, and a 4 represents flawless execution and a seasoned track record of high-performing, motivated teams.

Freudian Help
Freud wasn't far off when he suggested the use of a coin to determine one's gut reaction. Candidates often regale interviewers with tales of their past achievements. But unless an interviewer reads the fine print at the bottom of the résumé, the part that says, "I accomplished all these things, but I'm a jerk!" the employer will hire on achievements and later fire because of character traits. Arrogance, aloofness, prejudice, perfectionism and melodrama do not make for a great addition to your company's culture. Ferret them out ahead of time.

The goal of a well-executed interview is to truly step into the mind of your interviewee. Microsoft and Google are known for their eccentric interview questions, such as, "Why are manhole covers round?" and "You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"

These questions may seem bizarre, but the interviewers are testing candidates' critical thinking skills and their ability to create unique solutions or utilize a novel perspective, traits that are important to these companies' future success. In the past, an interviewer would hand a potential employee a pen and say, "Sell me this pen." Today, an interviewer will hand a candidate a blue pen and say, "Here's a red pen." What is the interviewer analyzing? How the candidate chooses to respond. Does the candidate refute the statement and correct the interviewer or does she ask, "What makes this pen red?"

Questions that get into the minds of candidates include:

1. When was a time you demonstrated initiative, only to have your idea(s) not accepted? How did you handle the situation?
    
2. What is the purpose of comedy? What is one of your favorite comedic books or films? What makes it so?
    
3. What makes for a good teacher? Who was one of your favorite teachers? What did he or she do? Least favorites? What made him or her so bad?
    
4. What's one of the best charities in the world? What makes it so great?

Candidates' responses shed light on how they may interact in a team setting, whether or not they're introspective, thoughtful, adaptive or analytical, or how well they might fit into a particular culture and values system.

Assessing Agility
Skills consistently predict job success. Unlike mutual funds, past performance is an indicator of future success. Where most interviewers go sideways, however, is spending too much time asking candidates about past achievements. It's important to know that there has been prior success, but it's more important for an interviewer to hear about a candidate's learning agility: what the candidate learned along the way and how she will apply her skills and knowledge to the company's current and future challenges.

Use specific questions or assessments that ascertain critical knowledge and skills needed to perform well in the job. When hiring a computer programmer to create and solve algorithms, by all means test the candidates. If you're hiring a sommelier, you might ask her opinion on which wines best express aromas of leather. But she also needs to be able to interpret a burgundy wine label technically and to know the difference between a pinot noir and a merlot. When hiring a vice president of sales to develop a strategic sales plan, the candidate must know the most critical components to include and what information will be required to write one.

Questions that help interviewers assess the application of necessary knowledge and skills include:

1. One of our top priorities is ____________. Would you please describe your role in a comparable accomplishment? Is there anything you would repeat or change in this next round? What specific skills do you possess that lend themselves to the project's success?
    
2. How would you approach solving or implementing ____________ in our environment?

Listen for candidates' keen understanding of the underlying issues, the complexity of systems, departments or personalities. Glean how well they understand a project's particular scope and scalability, how objectives are measured and people utilized.

In addition to candidates' answers, listen to their questions. Often the questions they ask will reveal their in-depth knowledge or lack thereof. Does she ask intelligent questions to help her formulate a brilliant approach or solution?

The goal of any interview is to hire correctly. To increase the probability of a great hire, create an objective process to rate candidate responses; delve into the minds of your candidates with thought-provoking questions that ensure unrehearsed responses; and assess candidates' skill levels and how readily those skills can be applied to your needs. Interviewing may be risky, but it shouldn't be a game of chance.

AmyK Hutchens is a speaker, consultant and executive coach. She is best known for drawing on her master's degree experience at John Hopkins University to help business leaders capitalize on how the brain and human perception filters work to help them be more effective in their business and personal lives.