Interviews are the most widely used technique in the hiring process. The need for direct interaction with job candidates means that it is almost unheard of for a company to make a hiring decision without first conducting an interview. Upgrading your interviews is one of the easiest and best things you can do to improve the quality of your hiring. The payoffs for this exercise (systematic and accurate selection decisions) greatly outweigh the pitfalls (such as the investment of time and the need for change management) associated with it.
Unfortunately, the typical interview is unstructured and highly subjective, a fact that reduces its ability to accurately predict job performance. In fact, the traditional interview offers very little to help companies make effective hiring decisions. This is a problem, because effective prediction requires the use of reliable tools that provide accurate and systematic measurement of human elements that are directly related to job requirements. In more specific terms, problems with the traditional interview can be traced to two major types of errors that are inherent in the process. They are:
Errors of content. There are two main sources for this type of error. First, traditional interviews often fail to ask questions that are directly linked to job requirements. While questions such as "Where do you see yourself in five years?" and "Why do you want to work for our organization?" may elicit interesting information, the answers are hard to map directly to critical competencies that define job performance.
Secondly, lack of structure in an interview's content often results in different interviewers asking different questions of different applicants. This means that applicants are essentially being evaluated using different information, making it very hard to compare apples to apples.
Errors in process. Failure to use a standardized process--in which all applicants are evaluated using the exact same criteria, and in which there is some way of using information elicited from the interview to make final ratings--greatly reduces the effectiveness of the interview as a predictive tool. Failure to provide structure to your interviewing process opens the door to bias, stereotypes, and other various kinds of errors associated with the inherent subjectivity of interviews. Effective interviews hinge on the exclusive use of job-related information to make decisions. (Furthermore, the more subjective your evaluations are, the less legally defensible your interview process will be.)
You should take some important steps to remove these errors, of both content and process, to ensure you have an optimum technique for interviewing job candidates. You should:
Use formal techniques, such as job analysis, to define job performance and create questions that have direct links to critical aspects of job performance.
Ask the same (or very similar) questions to each interviewee to ensure that the same basic information is collected from each candidate.
Use questions that require interviewees to discuss their past behaviors in situations that are similar to those they will face in jobs with your company.
Errors of process can be addressed by creating a procedure that requires you to:
Rate each interview question individually and combine information from multiple questions when you make final ratings.
Use rating scales that provide clear, job-related anchors.
Require interviewers take detailed notes for each question.
Use multiple interviews to assess each candidate.
Provide extensive interviewer training.
SOURCE: Charles A. Handler, Ph.D., PHR, Rocket-Hire, New Orleans, November 14, 2005.
From India, Mumbai
49Unfortunately, the typical interview is unstructured and highly subjective, a fact that reduces its ability to accurately predict job performance. In fact, the traditional interview offers very little to help companies make effective hiring decisions. This is a problem, because effective prediction requires the use of reliable tools that provide accurate and systematic measurement of human elements that are directly related to job requirements. In more specific terms, problems with the traditional interview can be traced to two major types of errors that are inherent in the process. They are:
Errors of content. There are two main sources for this type of error. First, traditional interviews often fail to ask questions that are directly linked to job requirements. While questions such as "Where do you see yourself in five years?" and "Why do you want to work for our organization?" may elicit interesting information, the answers are hard to map directly to critical competencies that define job performance.
Secondly, lack of structure in an interview's content often results in different interviewers asking different questions of different applicants. This means that applicants are essentially being evaluated using different information, making it very hard to compare apples to apples.
Errors in process. Failure to use a standardized process--in which all applicants are evaluated using the exact same criteria, and in which there is some way of using information elicited from the interview to make final ratings--greatly reduces the effectiveness of the interview as a predictive tool. Failure to provide structure to your interviewing process opens the door to bias, stereotypes, and other various kinds of errors associated with the inherent subjectivity of interviews. Effective interviews hinge on the exclusive use of job-related information to make decisions. (Furthermore, the more subjective your evaluations are, the less legally defensible your interview process will be.)
You should take some important steps to remove these errors, of both content and process, to ensure you have an optimum technique for interviewing job candidates. You should:
Use formal techniques, such as job analysis, to define job performance and create questions that have direct links to critical aspects of job performance.
Ask the same (or very similar) questions to each interviewee to ensure that the same basic information is collected from each candidate.
Use questions that require interviewees to discuss their past behaviors in situations that are similar to those they will face in jobs with your company.
Errors of process can be addressed by creating a procedure that requires you to:
Rate each interview question individually and combine information from multiple questions when you make final ratings.
Use rating scales that provide clear, job-related anchors.
Require interviewers take detailed notes for each question.
Use multiple interviews to assess each candidate.
Provide extensive interviewer training.
SOURCE: Charles A. Handler, Ph.D., PHR, Rocket-Hire, New Orleans, November 14, 2005.
From India, Mumbai
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