The vast majority of the interviews that I have been part of have been unstructured and I was often left thinking about how something could have been done better. At the last company I worked for we regularly interviewed candidates for entry level positions, but not once did I see any of the interviewers prepare questions or even take notes on how the candidate performed. Another area of concern that was talked about in lecture was how the interviewers talked too much. Part of every interview that was where one, or two, of the interviewers would rant talk about what our company different. This would leave me feeling like we spent time selling our company to the candidate rather than learning about them. One quote that really stuck out to me about why we continue to conduct interviews in this fashion is from the article “How to Take the Bias Out of Interviews”:
“The unwillingness to give up a much-loved evaluation approach seems to be driven by two factors: Managers are overconfident about their own expertise and experience, and they dislike deferring to more structured approaches…”
As I read this article, I felt that this was somehow directly written about the company I had worked for.
On the other end of the spectrum, I have been interviewed by places that utilized structured interviews. There was a set group of questions that every candidate was asked to respond to and this allowed them to directly compare candidates. I found that this worked very well to serve as a baseline but could have been improved. For example, I was interviewed for a federal government position where the interview process was very strictly regimented, to the point that interviewers could not ask further questions because all candidates needed to be asked the same questions.
Sources
1. How to Take the Bias Out of Interviews. [accessed 2023 November 3]. https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-take-the-bias-out-of-interviews
Leave a Reply