Conduct Better Interviews

How Can We Conduct Better Interviews?

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.

LEARN MORE: Ten
Interview No-No's points up common mistakes made when assessing job
candidates. Also, information on using job
competencies.