The Interview Reflection

Reflecting on my interview and recruitment experience of my current employer which was a startup in the nutrition supplement space, I realized how the informal and fast-paced nature of startups can both help and hinder the outreach, scope, and effectiveness of interviews. When applying on LinkedIn and interviewing multiple rounds via video call and in person, the setting remained very casual and the interview questions were unstructured for the most part. Looking back, I recall experiencing an extremely casual setting for the interviews which definitely made the interviews more comfortable, but also revealed some gaps in how the organization assessed candidates. While the topics sparked strong dialogue amongst ourselves during the interview, the questions lacked a structured direction and didn’t connect specific skill competencies required for the role.

Referring back to our lecture content in this module, this affected the validity of the interview, because the questions and topics discussed were not able to be correlated to the skill set needed to actually succeed in the position. From a reliability viewpoint, the lack of consistency across the interviewers resulted in a vast variety of questions and topics concerning multiple company elements such as marketing ideas, manufacturing, and the company’s mission. Because there was no structured set of evaluation criteria regarding the specific role, it’s unlikely that each candidate who applied was evaluated equally, which in turn weakens overall reliability. Regarding utility, I would definitely say the informal interview process helped me get a feel for the company’s culture and overall work environment, but lacked in offering insight on any regular actionable items that would fall under my responsibility.

If I could go back in time to advise the team, I’d recommend developing a set of basic structured behavioral questions that could be used across the majority of job openings which were tailored to core skills and industry/product knowledge. This would not only improve the overall validity of the interview process, but also allow management to cross compare applicants’ answers more easily due to the increased level of consistency within the interview questions. In such a fast growing start-up environment, which is competing in an increasingly evolving industry like nutritional supplements, making predictive and evidence based hiring decisions can give an emerging company a competitive edge.