3
Structure Interviews to Recruit and Hire the Best People
CYNTHIA KAY STEVENS
Organizations use employment interviews as a primary means for applicants and hiring managers to meet and gather information from each other for the purpose of making selection and job choice decisions. When applicants or employers have limited time and many alternatives, interviews offer a flexible, efficient format in which to exchange information. Unlike other selection devices (e.g. tests, biodata inventories), interviews don’t require expert advice and large samples for development and implementation. They typically do not raise the legal challenges and equal employment opportunity concerns that standardized tests do. Moreover, interviews can be easily adapted to accomplish different goals: introducing applicants and employers, attracting applicant interest, screening out unsuitable candidates, clarifying the rank order of finalists. Such efficiency and flexibility may account for its popularity; interviews (along with reference checks) are the most common selection procedure used across a wide range of jobs and industries (BNA, 1988; see Dipboye, 1992).
Paradoxically, their flexibility also makes it difficult to use interviews effectively. Interviews can vary widely in terms of how many applicants and interviewers are present, question types and sequences, topics covered, how much training and information interviewers and applicants have beforehand, consistency of practices across applicants, and how interviewers’ evaluations are used. Some interview formats are better than others at achieving selection and recruitment goals; mismatches between the format and interview goals can impair the quality of managers’ and applicants’ decisions.
Empirical research has focused on how well interview ratings predict actual job performance, as measured by the correlation coefficient between interviewers’ ratings and hired applicants’ job performances. Although this research has offered useful insight into the interview formats needed to make good hiring decisions, the use of interviews to achieve other organizational goals (such as attracting top applicants) suggests the need for a broader perspective on how to design effective interviews.
At issue is the need to make good joint decisions - that is, to exchange accurate information that enables both applicants and organizations to make the best decisions given the alternatives available to each. To do this, managers can structure interviews so that they both provide and collect valid information for use in making decisions.
The purpose of this chapter is to review and summarize what we know about improving decision making in employment interviews. A key theme of this chapter is that, by understanding the factors that impair information quality or exchanges, managers can structure interviews to improve both decision quality and hiring and recruitment outcomes. I begin by describing decision-making research and the factors that affect applicants’ and interviewers’ judgments and decisions. Then, I discuss nine subprinciples for designing interviews to improve decision making. Finally, I conclude with examples of how poorly designed interviews might be restructured to enable both applicants and interviewers to make better decisions.
Decision theorists (see Chapter 25, this volume) have converged on the idea that people use one of two processes for making decisions: a rapid, largely unconscious, implicit approach in which choices are made with minimal effort, or a slower, deliberative, controlled approach in which alternatives are consciously weighed and compared (Evans, 2008). Particularly when facing numerous alternatives, decision makers will use these processes sequentially - first automatically screening out candidates that fail to meet some possibly arbitrary criteria, then concentrating their efforts on a closer, more conscious, evaluation of those that remain (e.g. Payne, Bettman, and Johnson, 1988; Svenson, 1992). This two-stage approach is common in both hiring and application decisions, in which “unsuitable” choices are eliminated quickly and without much conscious thought, and conscious effort is focused on a smaller subset. For example, both applicants and hiring managers often make early decisions about whether to interview on the basis of limited information (e.g. presence of grammatical errors in résumés; company reputation or familiarity), and then use later information (including that gained from interviews) to evaluate each other more thoroughly.
Within this dual-process approach, researchers have identified many cognitive, motivational, and contextual factors that affect decisions. The cognitive factors include how decisions are framed (e.g. as the potential gain or possible loss of good employees; see Tversky and Kahneman, 1981), a number of heuristics or mental shortcuts used to evaluate alternatives (e.g. comparing the similarity of candidates to current employees to judge suitability - see Tversky and Kahneman, 1974; or considering résumé length to judge applicant quality - see Chinander and Schweitzer, 2003), and a tendency to look for information that confirms, rather than tests, one’s expectations (e.g. seeking answers that “screen in” rather than rigorously evaluate a favored candidate; see Snyder and Swann, 1978). Motivational factors include decision makers’ goals, such as the desire to grow and develop versus to maintain a steady state (e.g. to hire someone with potential versus an established performer; see Brockner and Higgins, 2001), a desire to experience happiness or avoid disappointment with the decision’s outcome (see Mellers, 2000), or the desire to justify a preferred conclusion (see Boiney, Kennedy, and Nye, 1997). Finally, contextual factors include the conditions or circumstances under which people make decisions, such as how many alternatives are available, what their characteristics are relative to each other, and the timing of the decision (see Hsee, Blount, Loewenstein, and Bazerman, 1999). For example, evaluations shift depending on the set of alternatives available: an applicant with average qualifications will be evaluated quite differently depending on whether they are the only candidate available or one of several candidates all of whom have either strong or weak qualifications.
In summary, applicants and hiring managers will use a combination of rapid/low effort and slower/deliberative decision processes when evaluating their choices. An examination of how the interview context and both individuals’ cognitive processes and motivations influence these types of decision making enables us to identify strategies for improving the quality of their decisions.
Interviews enable applicants and employers to meet - either face to face or via technology - to exchange information that will allow them to make decisions about each other. As such, it is useful to explore what we know about the context, cognitive demands, and motivations of each party and how these factors affect their evaluations.
Interviewers’ decisions
Available studies show that interviewers’ judgments can be swayed by many of the cognitive, motivational, and contextual factors that affect other types of decisions. For example, interviewers often judge applicants’ suitability using implicitly held stereotypes about race, gender, age, or disability status (e.g. Hitt and Barr, 1989; Reilly, Bockettie, Maser, and Wenet, 2005; Segrest Purkiss, Perrewé, Gillespie, Mayes, and Ferris, 2006), although the impact of some factors such as applicants’ race may be less than that found for standardized tests (Huffcutt and Roth, 1998). Some evidence suggests that interviewers weigh negative information about applicants more heavily than they do positive information (Macan and Dipboye, 1988), but the role that negative versus positive information plays depends on what sorts of judgments must be made and how involved interviewers are in the decision process (see Posthuma, Morgeson, and Campion, 2002).
Several features of the interview context and its goals can also shift interviewers’ motivation and thus their evaluations. Research shows that when determining applicant suitability, interviewers often unconsciously consider personal qualities (e.g. interpersonal skills or appearance; see Huffcutt, Conway, Roth, and Stone, 2001; Pingitore, Dugoni, Tindale, and Spring, 1994), how similar they are to applicants (e.g. Kristof-Brown, Barrick and Franke, 2002), and how well they think applicants would fit with their organization’s culture (Cable and Judge, 1997), regardless of whether others in their organization would agree with their assessments or whether those qualities are important for successful job performance. This subjectivity leaves room for applicants to present themselves as likable or similar to interviewers as a strategy to obtain higher interviewer evaluations (Levashina and Campion, 2007). Further, some studies have suggested that interviewers may use résumé and background information about applicants to form preliminary impressions about their suitability, and then elicit information during interviews that confirms these early impressions (Dougherty, Turban, and Callender, 1994), although additional careful studies of this issue are needed. Contextual factors such as whether applicants are evaluated sequentially (versus compared to one another at the same time) and the number of openings (few versus many) also affect interviewers’ judgments, such that applicants are held to higher standards when evaluated as part of a larger pool or when there are fewer openings available (Huber, Northcraft, and Neale, 1990).
Because interviewers’ evaluations can be affected by so many extraneous factors, an important question is whether interviewers in general can do a reasonably accurate job of predicting which applicants will perform well if hired. One possibility is to use at least three or four interviewers to independently interview each applicant; averaging these ratings yields good prediction regarding likely job performance (Schmidt and Zimmerman, 2004). If it is not possible to arrange for multiple interviews for each applicant, other studies have suggested that there are individual differences in interviewer accuracy - that is, some interviewers consistently make better predictions than others (Dougherty, Ebert, and Callender, 1986; but see Pulakos, Schmitt, Whitney, and Smith, 1996).
Structured interviews
Several modifications have shown promise for improving interviewers’ accuracy, including training interviewers (Dougherty et al., 1986), having them set goals to form accurate impressions (Neuberg, 1989), and holding them accountable for their decisions and recommendations (Motowidlo, Mero, and DeGroot, 1995). However, the largest and most consistent gains in predicting which applicants will perform well on the job seem to come from structuring interviews - that is, standardizing some aspects of the questions asked, delivery, and evaluation process. Across interviewers, the use of structured interview formats leads to better prediction of job performance (correlations range from .35 to .62) than does the use of unstructured interviews (correlations range from .14 to .33; see Huffcutt and Arthur, 1994; McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt, and Maurer, 1994).
Applicants’ decisions
Although less research has examined applicants’ decision, the existing studies do suggest that many cognitive, motivational, and contextual factors can sway applicants’ judgments. For example, applicants are concerned with finding jobs and organizations whose attributes provide a good fit with their interests and needs (Judge and Cable, 1997). Given that they often have little information to determine whether a given job opportunity provides a good fit, applicants may rely on signals to infer these attributes, such as whether the organization has a good reputation (Highhouse, Zickar, Thorsteinson, Stierwalt, and Slaughter, 1999), their beliefs about the organization’s personality (Slaughter, Zickar, Highhouse, and Mohr, 2004), and whether the interviewer was warm and personable during the interview (Chapman, Uggerslev, Carroll, Piasentin, and Jones, 2005). Some data suggest that applicants dislike structured interviews and report being less likely to accept job offers from organizations that use them (Chapman and Rowe, 2002) although the data are mixed on the latter point. Applicants also show evidence of biased judgments depending on how difficult they think it will be to obtain a job: they evaluate the opportunity more favorably following interviews if they think they may receive fewer job offers than if they expect to have many offers (Stevens, 1997).
Researchers have not examined whether applicants’ decisions following interviews predicts their subsequent job satisfaction or tenure with organizations. Nonetheless, some data indicate that interviews providing structured, realistic job information may help applicants self-select out of jobs in which they might be unhappy, and among those who do accept jobs, exposure to realistic job information leads to longer tenure on the job (see Buckley, Mobbs, Mendoza, Novicevic, Carraher, and Beu, 2002). This effect may be limited to situations in which applicants have other job offers from which to choose, however (Saks, Wiesner, and Summers, 1994).
How to structure interviews
Although interview structure is an important means for improving joint decision making, some managers are unclear regarding what it means to structure an interview, and many fail to see the value of increasing interview structure (Van der Zee, Bakker, and Bakker, 2002). Campion, Palmer, and Campion (1997) identified 15 possible content and process dimensions on which interviews could be structured (e.g. using job analysis to determine question content, standardizing interview lengths, using statistical procedures to combine interviewers’ ratings). To reduce this list, Chapman and Zweig (2005) surveyed applicants and interviewers and found three primary areas that increase structure and one that reduces it. Features that increase interview structure include question sophistication, or using question formats known to yield valid information (such as past behavior description or situational questions); question consistency, or asking the same questions in the same order to all applicants; and evaluation standardization, or using the same numeric scoring procedures for rating all answers. Rapport-building, or asking non-content-related questions and making light conversation, is thought to put applicants at ease and improve their attraction to the organization, although it may reduce interview structure and any information obtained from applicants may be unrelated to their job performance. Their study found that interviewer training increased interviewers’ use of standardized evaluations and sophisticated question formats, but had no effect on increasing consistency in questions asked. Importantly, applicants found highly structured interviews to be more difficult, but this did not reduce their intent to accept job offers.
Structuring interviews has many benefits for organizations and applicants, particularly in terms of increasing the exchange of valid information to make decisions. Clearly, there may be some tradeoffs with interviewer and applicant discretion (Van der Zee et al., 2002), although the loss of control may not be as great as managers assume it will be. The next section describes how to improve interview structure.
Effectively structuring interviews to improve decision making is not difficult, but it does require advance preparation and critical analysis. Involving interviewers in the process of developing an interview structure can improve their job challenge and satisfaction (see Judge, this volume). Moreover, it can communicate a greater sense of professionalism to applicants. To assist managers in improving the quality of decisions following interviews, I offer the following nine subprinciples.
Subprinciple 1: Identify the primary goals for the interview: recruitment, selection, or a combined focus
Goals enable people to channel their efforts in appropriate directions and gauge their progress (see Chapter 9, this volume). They also affect interview decision making by orienting interviewers to accomplish important tasks. Thus, interviewers need to have clear guidance regarding the purpose of their interviews: recruiting and attracting a larger applicant pool, screening out unsuitable applicants, or a combined focus on recruitment and selection. Such knowledge helps them determine the appropriate structure for their interviews - in particular, how much time should be devoted to collecting or providing information.
Subprinciple 2: Develop a set of questions - based on job analysis - that ask about applicants’ capacity to perform the job
All interviewers ask questions, and having a prepared set of questions with clear links to job performance can only help applicants and interviewers by signaling what attributes are important. To ensure that questions are relevant to the job, begin by reviewing available job descriptions or specifications, which should state the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOCs) needed for success, the tasks performed, and essential work conditions. (O*Net online is a good generic source of job analysis information if job descriptions or specifications are lacking.) Identify the KSAOCs, tasks, and work condition requirements that are best assessed in an interview (e.g. intelligence is most effectively and reliably measured through cognitive ability tests; see Chapter 1, this volume), and write questions that ask - in a non-transparent manner - whether applicants have or can demonstrate those capabilities.
Formats. Two question formats have proven to be most effective for interviews: past behavior description and situational questions. Past behavior description questions ask for examples of past performance (e.g. “Tell me about a time when . . . ”), whereas situational questions ask what applicants would do in a given situation (e.g. “How would you deal with a situation in which . . .”). As an example of assessing customer service orientation, a past behavior description question might be, “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with the concerns of an upset customer - what was the situation and how did you respond?” A corresponding situational question would be, “Imagine you had to deal with an upset customer who did not receive their order when it was promised. What specifically would you do to deal with their concerns?” Some research suggests that, all other factors equal, past behavior description questions may yield more useful information than situational questions (Taylor and Small, 2002), although both formats are superior to other types of questions that may be asked (e.g. applicants’ opinions).
Subprinciple 3: Develop a set of scoring criteria for evaluating applicants’ answers
Once a set of interview questions has been written, it is extremely useful to create a set of criteria for evaluating applicants’ answers. Having a scoring guide ensures that, no matter who conducts the interview, all applicants will be held to the same standards. Managers can identify which responses are optimal and which are problematic by talking to job incumbents, reviewing the work behavior of current good and poor performers, and in some organizations examining the performance evaluations themselves to identify important indicators. Research shows that having and using scoring criteria provides a significant and independent contribution to accuracy when predicting applicants’ job performance (Taylor and Small, 2002). To the extent that interviewers are inexperienced, providing scoring guidelines can also help to make the task of conducting interviews easier.
Subprinciple 4: When interviewing, ask all applicants the same questions in the same order
Asking all applicants the same questions in the same order helps to provide comparable information about each applicant. It is inherently fairer, in that all applicants are given the same opportunity to explain what they can do and why they are qualified for the position. Some managers may resist such consistency, in that it limits their spontaneity and can make the interviews seem more rote. However, to the extent that interviewers spend a portion of each interview answering applicants’ questions about their organizations, this concern may be less problematic.
Subprinciple 5: Ask interviewers to take brief notes on each applicant and to review their notes before rating applicants
Data concerning this recommendation are mixed: interviewers who take detailed notes show better recall of information about applicants, but their judgments about applicants’ performance potential are not necessarily more accurate than those of interviewers who do not take notes (Middendorf and Macan, 2002). However, asking interviewers to take some notes accomplishes several objectives: (a) it aids in holding interviewers accountable for their recommendations, which has been shown to improve the quality of their recommendations (Motowidlo et al., 1995), (b) it communicates an interest in what applicants have to say, which can help when recruiting applicants, and (c) it enables interviewers to recall applicants’ answers when comparing or discussing job candidates.
Middendorf and Macan (2002) found that interviewers who wrote down key points were better able to differentiate between applicants, possibly because their attention was less divided between listening to applicants and writing. Moreover, they found that asking interviewers to review their notes prior to making ratings of applicants helped them to make more accurate ratings. Such an approach should help interviewers to focus on what applicants have to say, and to make ratings without the added pressure of responding to or shielding their evaluations from applicants who are seated nearby.
Subprinciple 6: Select or train interviewers to build rapport with applicants
Research indicates that most applicants have determined which organizations they prefer well before their interviews (Collins and Stevens, 2002), but it also consistently shows that exposure to warm, personable interviewers improves their intentions to pursue or accept job offers (see Chapman et al., 2005). Interviewers who are high in extraversion and agreeableness are likely to be more successful in establishing rapport than are introverts or those low in agreeableness. If it is not possible to select interviewers who are naturally skilled at putting others at ease, interviewers can also be trained to improve their rapport-building behavior. For example, open non-verbal behavior (e.g. eye contact, smiling, and open body posture), welcoming statements, and a willingness to fully answer questions can improve applicants’ perceptions of interviewers’ personableness.
Subprinciple 7: If interviews receive preinterview information about applicants, make sure that it is valid
Research shows that, when interviewers have access to preliminary information about applicants (e.g. from résumés or test scores), it may prompt them to form impressions about applicant suitability which then affects how they conduct the interview (Dougherty et al., 1994). This problem has led some experts to recommend that all preinterview information be withheld from interviewers (e.g. Dipboye, 1989). Although this recommendation may ensure that interviews are not biased, it may not always be practical. For example, this procedure would not enable interviewers to clarify incomplete or ambiguous résumé or application information, and it may make it more difficult for interviewers to understand fully the context for applicants’ answers.
Thus, it is important to be aware of the problems associated with preinterview information and to take steps to ensure that it is accurate, valid, and used appropriately. For example, if interviews will be used for screening purposes, ensure that any preinterview information is valid - that is, it has a reliable, statistical relationship with job performance. It is also valuable to independently verify basic information from the résumé, such as degrees earned, prior employers and dates of employment, as a single phone call can quickly eliminate unscrupulous applicants. If interviews are being used to recruit applicants, access to preinterview information may help determine how best to describe the job and organization. If interviewers’ preinterview expectations are based on valid, accurate information, behavioral confirmation tendencies during the interview should pose less of a problem and may enable interviewers to shift their emphasis to recruiting promising applicants (Posthuma et al., 2002).
Subprinciple 8: Ask applicants about their decision process and criteria, and share realistic information tailored to those processes and criteria
Just as managers are interested in applicants who fit with their organizations, applicants typically seek organizations that provide a good fit with their interests and needs (Rynes, Bretz, and Gerhart, 1991). Most applicants share similar concerns such as job type, location, pay level, and training opportunities. However, the specific type of information they want and how it will affect their decision process can vary across applicants as well as within applicants over time. Thus, interviewers can structure interviews to help applicants make good decisions by asking about the criteria that will be important in their decisions and the context in which their decisions will be made.
There are several benefits to this form of interview structure. First, interviewers can offer realistic information tailored to applicants’ interests, rather than giving a standard “speech” about their organizations’ positive attributes. To the extent that other firms do not provide such individualized approaches, this practice may help firms gain an advantage in attracting applicants’ interest. A second benefit is that such information can help interviewers estimate the probability that an offer would be accepted if extended. Applicants for whom one’s organization does not meet important criteria are less likely to accept offers, and firms that identify such mismatches early may focus their effort toward pursuing other attractive applicants who are likely to accept offers.
Interviewers may also find it helpful to inquire about applicants’ decision process, particularly the number of offers they expect or have received. This contextual factor has dramatic effects on decision making in other contexts - decision makers may reverse their preference for the same option when it is presented by itself versus as one of multiple options from which to choose (Hsee et al., 1999). Consistent with this, recruitment research has shown that applicants who expect to receive fewer offers evaluate a given firm more favorably after their interviews than do applicants who expect to receive multiple job offers (Stevens, 1997). Interviewers thus may gain insight into how their recruitment information will be received by asking about applicants’ expectations for success in their job searches.
Subprinciple 9: If it is not possible to structure interviews, then arrange for 3-4 independent interviewers to meet with each applicant
As suggested earlier, structured interviews consistently provide valid, predictive information about which applicants are likely to perform well on the job (e.g. Huffcutt and Arthur, 1994). Yet, Schmidt and Zimmerman (2004) found that averaging the ratings of three to four independent interviewers who used unstructured interviews also yielded good predictions about applicants’ likely job performance. Thus, if it is not possible to structure interviews, hiring managers can approximate their accuracy by obtaining and averaging the ratings from a set of unstructured interviewers. Of course, the best situation would be to conduct structured interviews with three or four independent interviewers - organizations would obtain high-quality information about applicants’ capabilities, and applicants would be able to hear multiple perspectives on what they could expect from the job and organization if hired.
Structure helps interviewers gather and disseminate information useful for making decisions. To illustrate this process, I provide several examples from my research (Stevens, 1998). The first comes from the transcript of an untrained interviewer who was screening applicants for a large public accounting firm. Untrained interviewers ask fewer open-ended, follow-up, and performance-differentiating questions, and they tend to ask such questions in ways that are transparent - that is, phrased to indicate the desired response. This interviewer’s questions are typical of this (the numbers represent turns at talk).
211. INTERVIEWER: What else have you done that ah, you feel would be helpful to you in public accounting?
212. APPLICANT: Oh, gee, as far as extracurricular? Well I was in a lot of service clubs and, you know, I’ve worked with people, done March of Dimes, things like that. Just dealing with people.
213. INTERVIEWER: How would you say your communication skills are?
214. APPLICANT: I think they’re pretty good. I think I have pretty good communication skills. Listening is part of it, yeah, so -
215. INTERVIEWER: Okay.
To screen applicants effectively, this interviewer could improve the information obtained by rephrasing and following up on these questions. For example, the question about what the applicant has done that would be helpful in a career in public accounting would yield more helpful data if the interviewer asked follow-up questions about what roles the applicant had held in various service clubs, and what specific things she had done for the March of Dimes. Asking about specific instances in which the applicant had worked with other people in these roles would provide important indications about how the applicant would interact with clients and co-workers. Likewise, the question about communication skills would prompt most applicants to answer that they had good communication skills - the “correct” answer is transparent. Rather than asking applicants for an evaluation of their own skills and taking that information at face value, the interviewer might instead ask past behavior description questions about instances in which the applicant had misunderstandings with other students or co-workers, and what she did to address those problems. Answers to this type of question would provide more concrete data about the applicant’s communication skills and would allow fewer opportunities for the applicant to manage the interviewer’s impression.
In contrast, the following (edited) segment shows how interviewers using past behavior description questions can gather high quality information.
103. INTERVIEWER: . . . Now I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about decision making and problem solving. Tell me about a particularly difficult decision you had to make.
104. APPLICANT: Um, well . . . that ah, decision on the design approach, it was very difficult for me. ‘Cause I didn’t want to-I had the authority to overrule the design team. But I didn’t want to use that um, unless I was absolutely sure they were wrong. I didn’t want to alienate either the architect-engineer or the design team. And that resulted in a lot of squabbles and a lot of running back and forth negotiating between people to find out what - what is the best way . . .
105. INTERVIEWER: Mmm. So what were the things, some things you just considered in your decision?
106. APPLICANT: Um, I had to consider the qualifications of the person. Ah, whether they really knew what they were talking about. Um, another factor was there was a definite bias between the design team and the architect-engineer. They all took many years of, of infighting. And I had to try to consider how much of this is just due to the fact that “This person’s designing it so I know it’s no good,” as opposed to, “It’s just . . . not going to work in our best interests.”
107. INTERVIEWER: Okay. And so what do you . . . see then you decided where you ended up going with . . .?
108. APPLICANT: Design team’s modifications, even though it was more expensive. In the long run, it proved to be ah, a better, um more cost effective way of operating.
Recruitment goals can also be met by structuring interviews through training and use of standardized questions. Recruitment-oriented interviewers are less likely than screening-oriented interviewers to receive training; given that untrained interviewers are seen by applicants as less organized and less professional, this trend is unfortunate. Untrained interviewers tended to talk more, jumping between asking and answering questions, providing unrequested information, and digressing into non-job-related topics. This problem is illustrated in the next example, in which an untrained interviewer sought to recruit an applicant for an insurance sales position. Although this segment is edited, the dialog between this interviewer and applicant followed the same pattern in which the interviewer did most of the talking.
25.-31. INTERVIEWER: Here are some reasons why you would want to choose a career with [name of firm]. We guarantee your income while you start, develop your own image on being your own boss, getting, ah, getting into management career status, extra benefits, ah, and on the back here, are twelve good reasons . . . why you would want to be an insurance agent. And, um, here is, ah, a brochure that explains ah, the training program in general . . . terms. It’s a lifelong training program. Um, we have, we feel, the finest training, uh, in the industry, ahh, as a company . . . And I believe, in my district, we have ah, the finest training in America simply because we use the company training in the first six-twelve months or so, and after that we go into material, we make available to you material from the Insurance Institute of America. Now when I say make available to you, ah, we recruit and train people from all walks of life. Some people can’t handle the material from the Insurance Institute of America because it’s college level and/or they don’t have the math background or they don’t have the interest, study skills . . . to do it. I put on six people in 19[ . . . ] and to date, ah, none of them have taken advantage of all the material that I could give them. Because, well, it’s not all bad either. Some of them, three of them are college students and they’re doing so well that they don’t have the time, they won’t take the time to, to attend the course. Ah, one of ’em has gone through a couple of ’em or attempted to go through a couple of ’em, but ah, nevertheless I’ve kept my end of the bargain and I would make it available to her and now in their second or third year, ah, they would take it a little more serious, ah the more advanced learning of insurance. Okay?
32. APPLICANT: Um-hmm.
33. INTERVIEWER: So we say we’ll make it available to you, if you’re good enough to take advantage of it, that’s fine.
34. APPLICANT: Um-hmm.
This interviewer clearly had a lot of positive information about his company to convey to applicants. Yet, his approach - doing all the talking, without finding out the applicant’s unique interests or criteria for making decisions - doesn’t allow him to tailor his “pitch” to her as an individual. He may or may not cover information about his company that would be of interest to her. A smarter strategy would be to ask her questions about why she was exploring a career in insurance sales, what she is looking for in a job or company, and what other jobs and organizations she has considered. Not only would this approach be more efficient in assessing her interest and communicating the information of greatest value to her, it would also convey interest in and concern for her as an individual. This interviewer might also spend some time talking about the less attractive aspects of being in insurance sales as a way to make the rest of the information he provides appear more balanced and credible.
A good way to approach this issue is provided in a final example, which is too lengthy to reprint fully here. The opening was for a human resources internship rotation program in a large conglomerate, and the interviewer determined through the résumé and some preliminary questions that the applicant had excellent qualifications. She then shifted the focus of their discussion to the factors that would be important in the applicant’s decision, and discovered that his wife was applying to medical schools across the country. This enabled the interviewer to pinpoint several divisions to which he could be assigned that were located near his wife’s preferred medical schools. Note that, had she relied on a prepared speech about the company’s programs and benefits, she would have neglected to provide this critical information about how her company could meet this applicant’s needs.
CONCLUSION
Interviews are typically used as one in a set of selection/recruitment tools to make decisions about whom to hire and which job offers to accept. Because they are flexible, interviews can be used to accomplish multiple purposes, such as introductions, recruitment, screening out unsuitable candidates, and so on. However, this flexibility can also be a stumbling block, as research shows that decision processes are susceptible to many cognitive, motivational, and contextual influences that may degrade the quality of the final decision.
Increasing interview structure can help managers achieve their recruitment or selection goals by helping to minimize the impact of irrelevant factors on interviewers’ and applicants’ decision processes. Structuring interviews introduces some standardization in procedures to make the judgments that follow less idiosyncratic. Wisely structuring interviews to balance the need for standardization with the need for interviewer and applicant discretion can ensure that both organizations and applicants get the most out of the process.
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Interviewing applicants
Imagine that you are preparing to interview applicants for a junior management consultant - a position in which incumbents conduct organizational studies and evaluations, design systems and procedures, conduct work simplifications and measurement studies, and prepare operations and procedures manuals to assist management in operating more efficiently and effectively. First, look up the necessary KSAOCs (knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics), required tasks, and common work environment conditions. You can find a wealth of information on O*Net (http://online.onetcenter.org). Using the information you find, choose three important requirements for the job and generate SIX structured interview questions (three using the behavior description format and three using the situational format).
Evaluating applicant answers
For each of the questions you listed above, come up with scoring criteria to evaluate applicants’ answers. Using a scale that spans from 1 to 5, generate criteria that would help you differentiate very poor (1), low effectiveness (2), average (3), above average (4), and extremely effective (5) answers to your questions.