7 Interviewing Candidates Source: Keith Brofsky/Thinkstock MyManagementLab® Improve Your Grade! When you see this icon, visit www.mymanagementlab.com for activities that are applied, personalized, and offer immediate feedback. 190 191 For a bird’s eye view of how one company created a new interviewing program to improve its strategic performance, read the Hotel Paris case on pages 210–211 and answer the questions after reading the chapter. WHERE ARE WE NOW … Chapter 6 focused on the selection process and on important selection tools such as tests. The purpose of Chapter 7 is to explain how to improve one’s effectiveness in using the most widely applied selection tool—the selection interview.1 The main topics we’ll cover include basic types of interviews, errors that can undermine an interview’s usefulness, how to design and conduct an effective interview, and developing and extending the job offer. In Chapter 8, we’ll turn to orienting and training the new employee. LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1 List and give examples of the main types of selection interviews. 2 List and explain the main errors that can undermine an interview’s usefulness. 3 Define a structured situational interview and give examples of situational questions, behavioral questions, and background questions that provide structure. 4 What are the main points to know about developing and extending the actual job offer? Hiring customer service and teller employees in banks is never easy. Although the jobs entail significant responsibility and dealing with sometimes difficult customers, the positions are not highly paid. Turnover is high. The head of recruiting for Great Western Bank needed an interviewing system that could process large numbers of applicants quickly but effectively. We’ll see what she did. 191 192 Basic Types of Interviews Managers use several interviews at work, such as performance appraisal interviews and exit interviews. A selection interview (the focus of this chapter) is a selection procedure designed to predict future job performance based on applicants’ oral responses to oral inquiries.2 Many techniques in this chapter (such as avoiding snap judgments) also apply to appraisal and exit interviews. However, we’ll postpone discussions of those two interviews until later chapters. 1 List and give examples of the main types of selection interviews. There are several ways to conduct a selection interview. For example, we can classify selection interviews according to 1. How structured they are 2. Their “content”—the types of questions they contain 3. How the firm administers the interviews (for instance, one-on-one or via a committee) Each has pros and cons. We’ll look at each. Structured versus Unstructured Interviews First, most interviews vary in the degree to which the interviewer structures or standardizes the interview process.3 In unstructured (or nondirective) interviews, the manager follows no set format. A few questions might be specified in advance, but they’re usually not, and there is seldom a formal guide for scoring “right” or “wrong” answers. Typical questions here might include, for instance, “Tell me about yourself,” “Why do you think you’d do a good job here,” and “What would you say are your main strengths and weaknesses.” This type of interview could even be described as little more than a general conversation.4 Most selection interviews probably fall in this category. unstructured (or nondirective) interview An unstructured conversational-style interview in which the interviewer pursues points of interest as they come up in response to questions. At the other extreme, in structured (or directive) interviews, the employer lists job-relevant questions ahead of time, and may even weight possible alternative answers for appropriateness.5 McMurray’s Patterned Interview was one early example. The interviewer followed a printed form to ask a series of questions, such as “How was the person’s present job obtained?” Comments printed beneath the questions (such as “Has he/she shown self-reliance in getting his/her jobs?”) then guide the interviewer in evaluating the answers. Some experts still restrict the term structured interview to interviews like these, which are based on carefully selected job-related questions with predetermined answers. structured (or directive) interview An interview following a set sequence of questions. In practice, interview structure is a matter of degree. Sometimes the manager may just want to ensure he or she has a set list of questions to ask so as to avoid skipping any questions. Here, he or she might just choose questions from a list like that in Figure 7-3 (page 205). The structured interview guide in Figure 7-A1 (pages 214–216) illustrates a more structured approach. As another example, the Department of Homeland Security uses the structured guide in Figure 7-1 to help screen Coast Guard officer candidates. It contains a formal candidate rating procedure; it also enables geographically disbursed interviewers to complete the form via the Web.6 WHICH TO USE? Structured interviews are generally superior. In structured interviews, all interviewers generally ask all applicants the same questions. Partly because of this, these interviews tend to be more consistent, reliable, and valid. Having a standardized list of questions can also help even less talented interviewers conduct better interviews. Standardizing the interview also enhances job relatedness (because the questions chosen tend to provide insights into how the person will actually do the job), reduces overall subjectivity and thus the potential for b
