Experiences with Effective & Ineffective Interviews

Experiences With Interviews

Overall, I can’t say I have had the worst interview experiences. But in all honesty, I can say my interviews were quite pleasant. However, whether my interview experiences went smoothly from either the professionalism of the company or from how prepared I was for the interview is up for debate. I can say with confidence I was well prepared, had a solid understanding of the job and what was being asked of me, listened actively, and even asked my own questions to elaborate more during the interview. More had taken place during the interview nonetheless, but I was indeed hired on the spot by the end of it. You can never be too prepared for an interview and I am glad I prepared the way I had for it.

Effective Interviews

There is a fine line between an effective and an ineffective interview. However, thankfully the majority of my interviews have been effective. And to no one’s surprise, these interviews followed most, if not all of what our lectures and readings have to say about interviews. To widen the base of an effective interview my interviewer had definitely done this a time or two before and was more than capable of conducting an interview. He was prepared and conducted it in a private setting, reviewing not only the job itself, but my attributes and resume along with me. He actively listened, while engaging in conversation and taking notes (Smith, 2021). One thing that my interviewer did that I felt was above and beyond was he had me “dig deeper” during parts of our conversation. You can see and feel his excitement to learn and hear more. He was not only optimistic throughout the interview but eager to learn more as well. I could feel his energy throughout the interview and I couldn’t help but match it as well. After the interview, he finished by reviewing his notes, expanding on any last-minute questions of his as well as mine, and politely concluded the interview with a smile on his face and a firm handshake. Words were exchanged and I was hired immediately after the interview.

Ineffective Interviews

My personal experiences with ineffective interviews are a little different than most. I have never had an unsuccessful interview as an interviewee. However, I have been on the other side and shadowed and interviewed by a somewhat new employee. My manager and I stood off to the side and listened as she conducted an interview with multiple potential employees. However, this was her first mistake as it states that “Replacing unstructured with structured interviews is only part of the battle; managers should also abandon panel, or group, interviews altogether… And it’s best to keep interviewers as independent of each other as possible” (Bohnet, 2016). By conducting an interview with multiple candidates at once it can raise some red flags. An interviewee can use another candidate’s thoughts and build off of his/her own case in order to earn a higher score on a question from the interviewer. This can affect the reliability, validity, and utility of each of the answers given from the questions. An easy fix that I would highly recommend is for the individual giving the interview to conduct the interviews one-on-one for each candidate. By doing so and asking each candidate the same pool of questions in order. It will help you understand the individual, gauge the reliability, validity, and utility in each answer given, and ultimately help you pick the best fit candidate for the job.

References

Swift, Michele. Week 5 (2021). Improving Interview Effectiveness. Lecture 4.

Bohnet, Iris. (April 18, 2016). “How to Take the Bias Out of Interviews”. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-take-the-bias-out-of-interviews