Interviews/recruiting are the most crucial part of the hiring process. The age old approach has been, unstructured interviews which have not evolved over time. The main purpose of the interview is for a manager to be able to identify talents and personality traits that are desirable to the company and fit the dynamic. The following quote outlines the importance of a successful interview “In the end, much of the secret to selecting for talent lies in the art of interviewing. When interviewing for talent, most managers are aware of the more obvious pitfalls: don’t put the candidate under undue stress; don’t evaluate people on their appearance alone; don’t rush to judgment. Avoiding these will certainly lay the foundations for a productive interview.” (88, Buckingham) With contemporary thoughts being placed on how to improve the effectiveness of interviewing/recognizing talent we have learned structured interviews are much more successful and group/panel interviews are ineffective and often times distracting. “Replacing unstructured with structured interviews is only part of the battle; managers should also abandon panel, or group, interviews altogether. I know of no evidence that they provide a superior gauge of a candidate’s future performance” (Bohnet)

My Experiences

I have only worked in the construction industry so my experiences will be biased and I believe my personal findings don’t hold much validity to other industries. It is typical in the construction industry for employees to leave a job (on good or bad terms) at the drop of a hat for various reasons. The main reasons for a change in construction include; pay, distance away from home, and an accurate job description. There could be much better retention of employees if some of the job descriptions were more accurate, for example most “equipment operator” jobs vary greatly in the manual labor expected from an operator, some companies will have you in the machine 10% of the time and some will 90% of the time there is no telling until you start but it can leave some people disappointed if more is expected than they signed up for. I have switched companies a few times and for me the most effective interviews seem to occur with someone who has previously worked in the field since they are able to ask me many questions based upon past experiences. Some questions may be general and these are often just to gauge personality but some can be very technical about a certain process or piece of equipment. Other questions may be asked in order to verify the validity of a candidate to make sure they are not lying. I believe all my interviews were short and concise enough to judge talents and understand past experiences however I do think the companies could benefit from adding a short personality test up front. The personality test would be especially useful if the position was for role of leadership such as superintendent or project manager in which the candidate needs to be a good fit for company dynamic. It is difficult for HR to perform an interview for construction if they have no hands on experience and I believe its nearly impossible for them to use social media tools like linkedin because most people in construction do not use something formal like this. The personality test would be the best evaluation of a candidate because it would judge problem solving skills not just statistical performance. In construction the greatest skill to have is problem solving and being a quick thinker/improvisor since the schedule is always tight and things need to be adjusted frequently. “Another powerful predictor of career success, the personality test, has gained a somewhat stronger foothold in employee selection. Hundreds of independent research studies have demonstrated that these tests are better indicators of future career success than letters of recommendation, interviews and educational credentials.” (Chamorro)

Buckingham, Marcus, and Curt W Coffman. First, Break All the Rules : What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, Gallup Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/osu/detail.action?docID=1584214.

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

Chamorro, Thomas. “The Perfect Hire.” Academic Search Premier, https://web-p-ebscohost-com.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=712be3c4-55fc-4944-b961-0b5972240604%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3D%3D#AN=88169357&db=aph.