One thing I’ve started to realize from my own interview experiences is that there is a disconnect between how I see myself as a worker and how I am able to present that in an interview. I know the kind of employee I am. I show up, I care about the work, and I am someone people can rely on. At the same time, I do not always feel like I can communicate that in a consistent or clear way to employers. I tend to get nervous, overthink my responses, and end up overcomplicating my answers. On top of that, I do not have the highest GPA, which can make it feel like employers are relying on signals that do not fully reflect how I actually perform on the job.
Connecting this to what we learned this week highlights issues with both reliability and validity in the interview process. Many of the interviews I have experienced were unstructured and conversational. While that can make them feel more comfortable, it lowers reliability because candidates are not being evaluated in a consistent way. My performance can change depending on how nervous I am or how the conversation flows, rather than reflecting my actual abilities. This also affects validity, since the questions are not always tied directly to the job itself. Instead of measuring how I would perform in the role, the interview ends up measuring how well I can think on the spot or communicate under pressure.
This also connects to utility. Interviews are widely used and easy to administer, but that does not mean they are the most effective tool for predicting job performance. Based on the readings, unstructured interviews tend to have lower predictive power, which matches my experience. It often feels like the process favors candidates who are naturally confident and articulate in interviews, even if that does not translate to being the strongest employee once hired.
If I could give advice to employers based on this experience, I would suggest making interviews more structured and focused on job related performance. Asking all candidates the same core questions, using behavioral or situational prompts, and applying a clear scoring system would improve reliability. To improve validity, employers could include work sample tests or realistic scenarios that allow candidates to demonstrate their actual skills. This would give candidates like me a better opportunity to show what we can do, rather than just how well we can talk about it in a high pressure setting.
Overall, this week’s material helped me realize that the disconnect I have experienced is not just personal. It reflects larger issues in how interviews are designed and used in the hiring process.