The purpose of this activity is to get you thinking about what makes for an effective and ineffective interview.
Reflect on your experience in the interviews you’ve participated in. Drawing on the readings and lectures from this week, what made those interviews effective and possibly ineffective, especially when you think about reliability, validity, and utility? If you could go back and advise those employers on how to improve the effectiveness of their interviews, what would you tell them?
The interviews I have participated in have for the most part been free-form interviews where the goal was to get to know me better. Usually there would be questions about what I would do in a difficult scenario, but they wouldn’t be job specific. These interviews weren’t effective according to Premuzic from “The Perfect Hire” because free-form interviews feed false perceptions or biases. This dangerous because it could leave the interviewer with a bad impression when discussing things that have nothing to do with the job. An example of this is that interviews are often biased against women, minorities, and older candidates. From what I have stated so far you can assume that I don’t think free-form interviews are reliable because they have no focus, and they can’t be repeated to accurately compare candidates. I don’t think they are valid because they don’t focus on job scenarios. Finally, they don’t offer great utility because the person interviewing has little restrictions which may create unfair scenarios for some candidates.
The best interview I’ve had was a series of about 4 interviews that each lasted 20 minutes. The interviews we’re more structured because each person interviewing was a professional asking questions related to the job they do in the company. I’m assuming this let them gauge where I could fit best, and it also let me see the different sides of the company. I know there we’re multiple applicants interviewing at the same time but with different people which tells me they probably had a list of questions. This approach is good because it allows for a fair comparison of the candidates which lowers the number of biases.
If I advised those employers on how to make their interviews more effective, I would relate Buckinghams advise in “First, Break All the Rules.” More specifically, I would tell them to understand what talents they need for the job they are trying to fill. Then ask questions to find applicants that have said talent and make the questions job related.
Citations:
Harter, J. (2016). First, break all the rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. Gallup Press.
Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Steinmetz, C. (2013). The Perfect Hire. Scientific American Mind, 24(3), 42–47. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamericanmind0713-42
