Through my personal professional experiences surrounding my career and education, I have held six jobs though I have only been in one professional interview. I say this because in my previous experiences, my interviews were non-formal and were more-so designed to find a start date. I have been fortunate to have some sort of connection with each opportunity, which I believe I have taken advantage of immensely. My most recent interview for my position for Juntos Student Outreach Assistant, an educational outreach program, I experience my first “real” interview. It was held over zoom, since the position is remote it suited it well.

I had a friend/mentor who has advised me all through college, she has been a great asset which landed me this job. I knew I had a strong chance for the job, as long as a held up in the interview. Here I was interview by my supervisor and region director Gina, and her good assistant Yuri who was on the search committee. The environment was very welcoming, and was designed to dig in deeper into who I am, my beliefs and views on educational, social, and legal processes, and a slight gauge into skill/decision making with a few hypothetical questions. I do not remember much, rather being much more nervous and underprepared than believe to be. I was overconfident in myself to perform in my first real interview. I was told I performed well, and showed slight signs of nervousness and being unprepared, nonetheless I got the job. Specifically through this course, and MGMT 448 (Recruitment & Staffing), I realized how much interviews might be considered unreliable, and also valid. The utility is know, it is a bit costly though in-person interviews are the common form of the hiring process and most effective. Utility may be high, though after all my hiring experiences, I realize reliability of an interview is often thrown out the window for the recommended applicant. Why? Because a trusted employee believes so. It can be said that simply, how does this make the interview valid? If we look at all hiring decisions, and analyze the decision making behind those hires, then we could see how an interview is unreliable when conducting between individuals recommended for the job, and those not. Specifically in MGMT 448, I remember a statistic that stated.

Although I have benefitted from these, I really ponder on how fair each of those interview processes were for other individuals. I am unaware of the conditions my supervisors had for our interview, though I would recommend to possibly test those vouched for employees more. If they are expected to do the job well, how much more can we gauge out of them? Begin to ask questions of what we don’t know of the employee, rather than test them on topics we hard from the internal employee. I have little to no hiring experience, I just believe they can be more transparent, and direct on what they are looking for. If both parties are clear on their goals and intentions it only increases the effectiveness of the interview.

References

Kirwan Institute. (n.d.). Understanding Implicit Bias. Understanding Implicit Bias | Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Retrieved July 23, 2022, from https://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/article/understanding-implicit-bias

Payne, K. (2018, March 27). How to Think about ‘Implicit Bias’. Scientific American. Retrieved July 23, 2022, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/