Chapter” Interviewing Candidates/Employee Interview

Introduction

An Interview is more than a discussion.

The interview is the most critical component of the entire selection process. It serves as the
primary means to collect additional information on an applicant. It serves as the basis in
assessing an applicant’s job – related knowledge, skills, and abilities. It is designed to decide if
an individual should be interviewed further, hired, or eliminated from consideration.

An Interview is a procedure designed to obtain information from a person through oral responses
to oral inquires.

A selection Interview is a selection procedure designed to predict future job performance on the
basis of applicants’ oral responses to oral inquires.

Interview is the way of face to face conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee,
where the interviewer seeks replies from the interviewee for choosing potential human resources.

Reasons for using Interviews

Interviews are a useful method to:

 Investigate issues in an in depth way

 Discover how individual think and feel about a topic and why they hold certain opinions

Advantages and Disadvantages of Selection Interview

The main advantages of Interview are:

 They are useful to obtain detailed information about personal feelings, perceptions and
opinions.
 They allow more detailed questions to be asked.
 They usually achieve a high response rate.
 Respondents’ own words are recorded.
 Ambiguities can be clarified and incomplete answers followed up
 Precise wording can be tailored to respondent and precise meaning of questions clarified
(eg for students with English as Second Language)
 Interviewees are not influenced by others in the group.

Disadvantages of Interviews

The main disadvantages of interviews are:

  They can be very time – consuming: setting up, interviewing, transcribing, analyzing,
feedback, reporting
 They can be costly
 Different interviewers may understand and transcribe interviews in different ways.

Interview Process

In Interview process following steps is considered:

Stage 1: Determine what information is required. What do you want to find out?

Stage 2: Decide on the method of data collection and the audience for the interviews eg students,
library staff, and academics.

Interviews can be conducted face to face, telephone or using chat messaging.

Interviews might be contacted by e-mail, posters or flyers or, if particular individuals are to be
targeted, by individual invitations sent by post or email. Tutors may be useful to help to recruit
students. Invitations should describe.

 The purpose of the interview

 The participants’ role and what is expected of them
 How long the interview will last
 Any rewards which will be provided.

Stage 3: Draft the interview schedule, considering content, wording, format, structure and layout

Issues to consider

 Can the question be easily understood?

 Is the question biased?
 Is the question necessary to the evaluation?
 Will interviewees be willing to provide the information?
 Is the question applicable to all interviewees?
 Does the questions allow interviewees to offer their opinions/expand on basic answers?
 Are follow up questions likely to be required?
 Will be straightforward to analyse?

Stage 4: Pilot/test the interview schedule with colleagues or a sample of potential interviewees
and revise as necessary

Stage 5: Conduct the interviews

Stage 6: Transcribe interviews

Stage 7: Analyse the transcripts

Stage8: Write up, present and use the findings

How to conduct an Effective Interview?

Or Explain and illustrate each guideline for being a more effective interview.

You may not have the time or inclination to create a full – blown, structured situational
interview. However, there is still a lot you can do to make your interviews more
systematic and effective.

Step 1: First, make sure you know the job. Do not start the interview unless you
understand the job and what human skills you’re looking for. Study the job description
and understand what traits and skills the ideal employee in that job should have.

Step 2: Structure the interview. Any structuring is usually better than none. If pressed for
time, you can do several things to ask more consistent and job relevant questions, without
developing a full-blown structured interview. Any of these will help. They include:

 Base questions on actual job duties. This will minimize irrelevant questions.
 Use job knowledge, situational, or behavioral questions and know enough about
the job to be able to evaluate the interviewee’s answers.
 Use the same questions with all candidates.
 Use descriptive rating scales (Excellent, fair, poor) to rate answers.
 If possible use a standardized interview form. At the very least, list your questions
before the interview.

Step 3: Get organized. The interview should take place in a private room where
telephone calls are not accepted and you can minimize interruptions. Prior to the
interview, review the candidate’s application and resume, and note any areas that are
vague or that may indicate strengths or weaknesses.

Step 4: Establish rapport: The main reason for the interview is to find out about the
applicant. To do this, start by putting the person at ease. Greet the candidate and start
the interview by asking a noncontroversial question, perhaps about the whether or the
traffic conditions that day.

Step 5: Ask questions. Try to follow the situational, behavioral, and job knowledge
questions you wrote out ached of time.

Types of Employment Interview

Managers use several interviews at work.

Appraisal Interview: An appraisal interview is a discussion, following a performance appraisal,

in which supervisor and employee discuss the employee’s ratings and possible remedial actions.

Exit Interview: When an employee leaves a company, organization often conducts an exit
interview. This aims at eliciting information that might provide some insight into what’s right or
wrong about the firm.

We can classify employee selection interview according to the following issues:

1. How structured they are.

2. Their “Content” – the types of questions they contain.
3. How the firm administers the interviews.

Structured VS. Unstructured Interview

A structured interview (also known as a standardized interview) is a particular set of

predetermined questions prepared by the interviewer in advance. On the other unstructured
interview in which the questions to be asked to the respondents are not set in advance.

Structured interview are a series of standardized interview questions designed to assess

candidates on a range of qualities important to the organization. The questions are provided to
hiring managers ahead of time and are administered to all candidates in the same order.

Interview Content (What types of questions to ask)

Interview can also classify based on the “content” or the types of questions you ask. Many
(probably most) interviewers tends to ask relatively unfocused questions. These might include “
What are your main strengths and weaknesses?” and “ What do you want to be doing 5 years
from now? Generally questions like these don’t provide much useful insight into how the person
will do on the job. At work, situational, behavioral and job – related questions area most
important.

In a situational interview, interviewee ask the candidate what his or her behavior should be in a
given situation. For example, you might ask a supervisory candidate how he or she would act in
response to a subordinate coming to work late 3 days in a row.

In a behavioral interview questions ask applicants to describe how they would react to a
hypothetical situation today or tomorrow, behavioral interview questions ask applicants to
describe how they reacted to actual situation in the past.

In a job related interview, the interviewer asks aqpplicants hypothetical or actual situations or
scenarios. Instead, the interviewer asks job-related questions such as, “Which courses did you
like best in business school?” the aim is to draw conclusions about, say, the candidat’s ability to
handle the financial aspects of the job the employer seeks to fill.

In a stress interview, the interviewer seeks to make the applicant uncomfortable with
occasionally rude questions the aim is supposedly to spot sensitive applicants and those with low
(or high) stress tolerance. The interviewer might first probe for weaknesses in the applicant’s
background, such as a job that the applicant left under questionable circumstances.

Stress interview may help unearth hypersensitive applicants who might overreact to mild
criticism with anger and abuse

Puzzle questions are popular. Recruiters like to use them to see how candidates think under
pressure.

How should we administer the interview?

Employers also administer interviews in various ways: one to one or by a panel of interviewers;
sequentially or all at once, and computerized or personally.

Most selection interviews are one-on-one and sequential. In a one-on-one interview, two people
meet alone, and one interviews the other by seeking oral responses to oral inquiries. Employers
tend to schedule these interviews sequentially. In a sequential (or serial) interview, several
persons interview the applicant, in sequence, one-on-one, and then make their hiring decision.

In an unstructured sequential interview, each interviewer generally just asks questions as they
come to mind. In a structured sequential interview, each interviewer rates the candidates on a
standard evaluation form, using standardized questions. The hiring manager then reviews and
compares the evaluations before deciding whom to hire.

Pannel Interview: A panel interview, also known as a board interview, is an interview conducted
by a team of interviewers (usually two or three), who together interview each candidate and then
combine their ratings into a final panel score. This contrasts with the one-on-one interview (in
which one interviewer meets one candidate. And a serial interview (where several interviewers
assesses a single candidate one-on-one, sequentially).

Phone interviews: Employers do some interviews entirely by telephone. These can actually be
more accurate than face to face interviews for judging an applicant’s conscientiousness,
intelligence, and interpersonal skills. Here neither party need worry about things like appearance
or handshakes, so each can focus on substantive answers. Or perhaps candidates – somewhat
surprised by an unexpected call from the recruiter – just give answers that are more spontaneous.
In a typical study interviewers tended to evaluate applicants more favorably in telephone versus
face to face interviews, particularly where the interviews were less physically attractive.
However, the interviewers came to about the same conclusions regarding the interviewees
whether the interview was face to face or by videoconference. The applicants themselves
preferred the face to face interviews.

Computerized Interviews: Some organizations computerize part of the interview process. A

computerized selection interview is one in which a job candidate’s oral and/or computerized
replies are obtained in response to computerized oral, visual, or written questions and / or
situations. Most computerized interviews present the applicant with a series of questions
regarding his or her background, experience, education, skills, knowledge and work attitudes that
relate to the job for which the person has applied. Some computerized interviews also confront
candidates with realistic scenarios to which they must respond.

How would your supervisor rate your customer service skills?

a. Outstanding
b. Above average
c. Average
d. Below average
e. Poor

Three ways to Make Interview Useful

There are three things to keep in mind to make the interview useful:

1. Structure the Interview: First, you should structure the interview. Structured interviews
are more valid than unstructured interviews for predicting job performance.
2. Be careful what sorts of traits you try to assess
3. Beware of committing interviewing errors

Interview Tips
Job Related. Try to make the interview questions job related. If the questions are not related to the job,
then the validity of the interview procedure may be lower.

Train Interviewers. Improve the interpersonal skills of the interviewer and the interviewer's ability to
make decisions without influence from non-job related information. Interviewers should be trained to:

 avoid asking questions unrelated to the job

 avoid making quick decisions about an applicant
 avoid giving too much weight to a few characteristics
 try to put the applicant at ease during the interview
 communicate clearly with the applicant
 maintain consistency in the questions asked

The Effectiveness of Interview

Unfortunately for recruiters, interview situation aren’t always this cut and dried. Rather, many factors
enter into the deliberation in determining if a candidate is a “good fit” for the organization. Although
interviews are typically part of every job search process, summaries of research on interviewing have
concluded that the reliability and validity of interviews are generally low. Despite its popularity, the
interview is expensive, inefficient and often not job related.

More specifically, a review of the research has generated the following conclusions:

1. Prior knowledge about the applicant can bias the interviewer’s evaluation.

2. The interviewer often holds a stereotype of what represents a “good” applicant.

3. The interviewer often tends to favor applicants who share his or her own attitudes.

4. The order in which applicants interviewed often influences evaluations.

5. The order in which information is elicited influences evaluations.

6. Negative information is given unduly high weight.

7. The interviewer may make a decision as to the applicant’s suitability in the first few minutes of the
interview.

8. The interviewer may forget much of the interview’s content within minutes after its conclusion.

9. Structured and well-organized interviews are more reliable.

10. The interview is most valid in determining an applicant’s organizational fit, level of motivation and
interpersonal skills.

Becoming a more Effective Interviewer

The differences we have described many seem to cast a dark cloud over the interview. But the interview
is far from worthless. It can help us to better assess the candidate as well as be a valuable for relaying
information to prospective employees.

For anyone who interviews prospective job candidates, whether as a recruiter in HRM or in any other
capacity, there are several suggestions we can offer for improving the effectiveness of interviews.

a) Obtain detailed information about the job for which applicants are being Interviewed: When
such information unavailable, you may tend to rely more on factors less relevant to the job, allowing bias
to enter into the assessment. You should therefore, at a minimum, have a copy of the recent position
description as an information source. You are now ready to structure the interview.

b) Structure the Interview so that the Interview follows a set procedure: Reliability is increased when
the interview is designed around a constant structure. A fixed set of questions should be presented to
every applicant. In the trade-off between structure and consistency versus none-structure and flexibility,
structure and consistency have proved to be of greater value for selection purposes. The structure
interview also aids you in comparing all candidates’ answers to a like question.
c) Review the candidate’s Application Form: This step helps you to create a more complete picture of
the applicant in terms of what is presented on the resume and what the job requires. This will help you to
identify specific areas that need to be explored in the interview. For example, areas not clearly defined on
the resume but essential for job success become a focal point for interview discussion.

d) Put the applicant at ease: Assume the applicant will be nervous. For you to obtain the kind of
information you will need, the applicant will have to be put at ease. Introduce yourself and open with
some talk like weather, the traffic coming to the interview etc. But be careful; don’t venture into illegal
areas with small talk about the applicant’s family. Keep it impersonal!

e) Asks your questions: The questions you are asking should be behaviorally based. Such questions are
designed to require applicants to provide detailed description of their actual job behaviors. You want to
elicit concrete examples of how the applicant demonstrates certain behaviors. The same behaviors that
necessary for successful performance on the job for which the interview is being held. If you are
unsatisfied with the applicant’s response, probe deeper to seek elaboration. The key here is to let the
applicant talks. A big mistake is to do most of the talking yourself. During this part of the interview, take
notes. Given the propensity to forget what was actually said during the interview, notes should be taken.
This will lead to increased accuracy in evaluation.

f) Conclude the interview: Let the applicant know that all of your questioning is finished. Summarize
what you have heard from the applicant and give the applicant an opportunity to correct something that is
unclear or discuss anything that you may have not addressed in the interview. Inform the applicant what
will happen next in the process and when he can expect to hear from you.

g) Complete a Post-interview Evaluation Form: Along with a structured format should go a

standardized evaluation form you should complete this item-by-item form shortly after the interviewee
has departed – while the information and your notes are still fresh in your mind. The information on this
evaluation can then be summarized into an overall rating or impression, for the candidate. This approach
increases the likelihood that the same frame of reference is applied to each applicant.

Guidelines for use in the Interview

Interview is an important of selection process. Before going to take interview as a human resource
manager we have to follow a guideline for conducting an effective interview. Now we shall prepare a
guideline for use in the interview.

1. Plan the interview: Before going to take interview HR manager review all the requirements of a
candidate and clarify the real picture of traits of an ideal candidate. The interview should take place in a
private room. HR manager makes a plan to keep record of interview and review this record after the
interview and then take decision about it.

2. To establish rapport: As an interviewer we should greet the applicants and meet with them very
cordially and then start questions about very simple issues. As a result, they feel at ease and express their
idea about the question very freely.

3. Ask question: Before going to start questions to the applicant about job related issues the interviewers
should prepare a list of questions. The interviewer should avoid yes or no question. The interviewer
would ask open-ended questions and listen to the candidate to encourage him or her to express thoughts
clearly.
4. Close the interview: The interviewer should leave time to answer any questions if the candidate has
and he should advocate on behalf of the firm. He also tries to end all interviews on a positive note.

5. Review the interviewer: After leaving the candidates the interviewer should review interview notes.
The interviewer should keep in mind that there are two types of mistakes – One is snap judgment and
other is negative emphasis. Reviewing the interview can help to minimize these two problems.

Guidelines for the Interviewees

When we get into a position where we have to do interviewing, we will probably have to negative some
interviews. There are some hints for excelling in our interview. The first thing to understand is that
interviews are used primarily to help employees determine what we are like as a person. Our skills and
technical expertise are usually best assessed through tests and a study of our educational and work
history. Interviewers will look first for crisp articulate answers.

There are 7 things to do to get that extra edge in the interview:

1. Preparation is essential: Before interview, we can learn about the employer, the job and the people
doing the recruiting. At library, we have to look through business periodicals to find out what is
happening in the employers field, who are the competitors? How are they doing? Try to unearth the
employer’s problems.

2. Uncover the interviewers’ real needs: We have to spend as little time as possible answering our
interviewers first question and as much time as possible getting him to describe his needs. We have to
determine interviewer’s accomplished and the type of person he needed.

3. Relate ourselves to the interviewer’s needs: After uncover the interviewers real needs, we are in a
position to describe our accomplishment in terms of interviewer’s needs. Start by saying something like
“one of the problem areas we have said is important to you is similar to a problem I once faced.” Then we
state the problem, describe our solution and reveal the results.

4. Think before answering: Before answering a question we should pass through three step process:
pause-think-speak. Pause means to understand the interviewer driving, think about how to structure our
question and then speak.

5. Appearance and enthusiasm are important: Appropriate clothing, good grooming, a firm handshake
and the appearance of controlled energy are important.

6. Make a good first impression: From the studies, it is found that the applicant’s first impression is
important. So, applicant should make a good first impression.

7. Non-verbal behavior: We should remember that our non-verbal behavior may broadest more about us
than the verbal content of what we say. Here maintaining eye contact is very important and speak with
enthusiasm, nod agreement so that we should articulate and fluent.