Interview Reflection

Affective V.S. Ineffective Interviews

Interviewing strategies and techniques vary from one organization to another. An effective interview consists of designing a specific job description and creating interview questions along with benchmark answers (Swift “Improving interview effectiveness”). Interviews should be structured to create a non-bias manor making for a level playing field for each individual applying for the position. An ineffective interview consists of a series of bias and inconsistencies, leading to skewed results in the interviews. Stated by Iris Bohnet “If you’re a hiring manager, you’re probably happiest getting a sense of a candidate through unstructured interviews, which allow you to randomly explore details you think are interesting and relevant.” (Bohnet) These strategies have resulted in a series of inconsistencies and become an unreliable source of understanding the employees capabilities along with on the job experience.

Personal Experience

Through my personal experience, interviewing for job opportunities and Internships I have been exposed to both, a more structured question oriented interview and a more casual conversation interview. In my opinion, both techniques get the point across and tell the interviewer what they need to know but when a group of people interviewing an individual come into play this can become intimidating for someone, leading to the benefits of a conversational style interview. When I was Interviewing for Knife River Construction they too used a more causal style of interview easing my nerves and leading to a more “get to know you and your abilities” type of interaction. As the conversation went on I felt like they were my friends engaging in a simple conversation where I wasn’t nervous to ask questions, bouncing ideas around and receiving all the information we both needed, whiles the interviewer can still slip the important questions into the conversation without the interviewee noticing. We have to remember the interviewee is interviewing the company as much as the company is interviewing them, so a sense of relation is important to keep in mind for the interviewer. On the other hand,  a question sale interview comes off as intimidating wondering if you’re going to say the right things make the right “first impression” further leading to a simple “do you have any questions for me” response at the end of the interview putting the interviewee in an uncomfortable, pressured situation feeling like you just want this to be over. Even though this style of interview is uncomfortable, it keeps a non-bias and consistant result across each individual.  

To conclude, even though unstructured interviews may feel more comfortable and easing for the interviewee,  keeping a sense of structure, validity, reliability and non-bias in our interview keeps an even standard from one candidate to another. If I was to recommend amendments to a previous interviewer I’ve had thought my experience, I wouldn’t tell them to get rid of the casual conversation aspect of the interview. I would inform them to simply add a little more structure to the script, asking each person the same questions in each interview, creating a non-bias and credible source of information between each candidate, while keeping the relation and connection between the parties in high priority.

Citations:

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.