Interviews are supposed to help employers figure out whether someone will be good at a job, but based on my experience, they don’t always do that very well. I’ve been in interviews that felt organized and meaningful, and others that felt more like random conversations that didn’t really measure much at all.
The best interviews I’ve had were structured and clearly connected to the job. The interviewer asked behavioral questions like how I handled a tough situation or worked through a problem in the past. Those interviews felt more reliable because everyone was likely being asked similar questions, and they felt more valid because the questions were actually related to the skills needed for the role (Buckingham & Coffman, 2016). I also felt like I had a fair chance to show what I could do instead of just trying to make a good first impression.
The worst interviews were the opposite. Some felt unplanned, with interviewers jumping from topic to topic or spending most of the time talking about themselves. Others focused too much on “fit” or personality without explaining what that meant. These interviews didn’t feel reliable since different candidates probably had totally different experiences, and they weren’t very valid because likability often mattered more than ability. Research shows that unstructured interviews are especially prone to bias, even when interviewers think they’re being objective (Bohnet, 2018).
If I could give advice to those employers, I’d tell them to slow down and add more structure. Using the same core questions, clear scoring guidelines, and more than one interviewer would make interviews more consistent and fair. Adding situational judgment questions or job related tasks could also improve how well interviews predict performance (Chamorro-Premuzic & Steinmetz, 2013).
At the end of the day, interviews work best when they’re treated like a real evaluation tool, not just a conversation.
References
Buckingham, M. (2012). First, break all the rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. Must Read Summaries.
Bohnet, I. (2016, April 18). How to take the bias out of interviews. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-take-the-bias-out-of-interviews
Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Steinmetz, C. (2013). The Perfect Hire