Effective interviewing is a vital skill that organizational HR professionals and hiring managers need to understand. Even if they aren’t the person conducting the interview, the design of questions, setting, and overall outline of the interview can, and should, differ based on the type of role being selected and the organization itself. I always come back to the old adage, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it’s stupid”. This carries over into interviewing because we must know what skills we are looking for, and how to bring that information to light in a limited encounter. A successful interview for a highly technical position is not going to be the same for one that is dependent on soft-skills, and vice-versa. Asking the wrong questions can severely limit the applicant pool, or worse, provide an applicant pool that isn’t benchmarking the competencies that the role requires. In my own experience interviews have been for entry-level jobs in retail, food service, and data entry. Most of the interviews I’ve had have been unstructured, informal, and kind of disappointing if I’m being honest. They all recycled the same questions, despite the needs of each position being fairly different. It’s like they all read the same self-help book about how to interview desperate teenagers and seem legitimate. “Tell us about a time you worked as a team to solve a problem” and questions like that are only useful if the person asking them knows how to interpret a variety of answers in context. I understand the desire to conduct behavioral-style interviews but the fact that all three I’ve had were nearly identical proves that maybe that’s not the place for them, or those questions in particular seeing as turnover/morale in those roles never improved. I have also experienced a panel interview which was very stressful for an entry level temporary position. I was borderline interrogated by several mid-level managers that had nothing to do with the role/department, misled about contract-to-hire, and given an offer on the spot. If I wasn’t desperate for income at the time I would have turned it down because all of my concerns ended up being correct. In general the biggest thing I’ve realized is that interviewing is a two way street, for a mutual match. Both parties should investigate the other through the process by analyzing how interviews are conducted, what kind of information they are seeking, and how they are using that data.