Effective Interviews

After reading the lecture notes and reflecting on my experiences with interviews I have definitely learned more ways to increase their effectiveness. Reflecting back on my past interviews they all have been pretty good. Before my interviews I would normally look at the job description again and think of examples of how I relate to it, research questions that I could be asked, and do mock interviews. It was really interesting to see that one the other side of the interview they were doing the same research. I think one thing that really helps an interview become effective is creating a rapport with each other. From the lecture I learned that creating that rapport helps puts the candidate at ease and results in better and more complete answers. I also think that one way you can increase the validity of an interview is having a good structure. To do this you should ask prepared questions, ask every candidate the questions in the same order, and pay attention to the time. Another thing that I learned was that it is very important to close the interview. One thing to watch out for when conducting interviews that can negativity affect it is having snap judgments. Interviewers can jump to conclusions and make a snap judgment just during the first few minutes and this can create a negative emphasis. To combat this, try not to judge test score or resumes and make sure that you don’t have any unconscious bias. Some other things you should watch out for is having negative nonverbal behavior and having the interviewer talk too much. One problem you can get is the candidate using tactics like ingratiation or self-promotion, this can lead to conclusions that are inaccurate. You also have to make sure that the interviewer doesn’t talk too much so that the candidate has insufficient time.