There are two flaws with the deductive or brainstorming approach. Second, they focus on attitudes, experience and abilities, not on skills. Skills are the critical elements that consistently predict job success. Incentives can motivate a skilled person, but all the motivation and good intentions won't improve an unskilled candidate. Not Researching the Reasons People Have Failed in a Job Research consistently shows that people fail in a job due to factors different from the criteria used to select them.
Most managers can list the two, three or four most common reasons people have failed.
Surprisingly, however, this exercise is seldom part of the process used to select the criteria to select new candidates. For example, in most competitive sales situations, the average potential customer buys from a new salesperson only after six contacts. The average failed salesperson gives up after three contacts. So while some of their sales techniques may have been adequate, the tendency to give up after three rejections was never evaluated or discovered. The primary reason is that skills have become so specialized there is little advantage or application for very general skills unless we're selecting for the most administrative type of entry level jobs.