I will discuss the interviews of a health center “Client Services Representative.”. During my time of employment, I was able to be interviewed and witness interviews from behind the scenes. I had my interviews approximately four months before I was allowed to sit in on interviews of other candidates.
Advantages: I really appreciated how every person whom I would be directly reporting to during my job was present at my interview. They each were able to ask specific questions that pertained to their roles. In this interview, leaders specifically utilized both situational and behavioral interviewing tactics.
Disadvantages: While this was an effective interview, there were a few issues. First, all the interviews are identical. There were no follow up questions permitted for interviewers. Secondly, the interview questions that were approved hadn’t been updated for years. These was a poor interview written based off of an inaccurate job descriptions.
Reliability: As far as consistency goes, this is a very reliable method of interviewing as the same questions are asked of each candidate. There is little to no room for additional factors to be creating bias in the information collected in the interview.
Validity: I would argue that this is not a very valid interview method as the interview questions and job descriptions have not been recently updated. Due to the fact that these questions are not reflective of the current responsibilities of the job, this is not a valid interview tactic.
Utility: Building off of the argument for validity, these interviews are not as useful as they could be. Outdated questions and inability to prompt elaborations limits the amount of useful information collected.
Advice: The advice that I would give to this group of interviewers would be to update the job description. During my time working for this organization, I have watched employee turnover rates skyrocket due to a lack of understanding about what the job entails. Proactively fighting against this burden by improving validity would be one of the most effective ways to increase the quality of interviews.
Trull, Samuel G. “Strategies of Effective Interviewing.” Harvard Business Review, 11 Apr. 2023, https://hbr.org/1964/01/strategies-of-effective-interviewing.
“How to Be a Good Interviewer.” Betterteam, https://www.betterteam.com/how-to-be-a-good-interviewer.
Got any book recommendations?