Within my short term career span, I have experienced six interviews between six different companies: one for a retail job at Target, two for electrical engineering internships at utility companies, and three for project engineering internships. Out of the six companies, I have been successful receiving job offers from the five very competitive engineering internships, but not from Target. To this day I find the outcome strange, but looking back today, I think I can identify certain aspects that may have effected my chances in these differing industries and what I believe resulted in Target losing someone that would’ve worked very hard for them.

The five interviews for my internships have all been relatively the same type of interview format. Two or three of the companies’ head-haunchos sit me down, look at my resume, prepare to take notes, and begin asking me questions about my school career and background and then move on to previous internships and work I’ve done. They spend time asking what encouraged me to go into this career path and where I would like to go with it. From here they casually ask behavioral interview-type questions for specific situations I’ve experienced and my personal opinions of what I’ve liked/disliked, challenges overcome, and my believed strengths/weaknesses. They also go further into asking about my career values and how I might fit within their company values, as well as what kind of company culture I like to see. After this, they typically begin an unstructured portion of the interview where they see if I have any specific questions for them.

The Target interview differed in the sense of there being only one exhausted looking store manager, and the tone being a bit more serious and less inviting than the others. I could tell that it was a highly structured interview where all participates answered standardized questions. I was faced with a large portion of situational questions over the course of the interview. It was less about what was on my resume, which I have worked hard to earn good credentials to show on it, and more about answering on the spot questions with obvious judgement and lack of interest on how I composed the answer.

For someone that is already a nervous wreck in interviews, Target’s structure did not bring out my most impressive side, whereas all other interviews, I have had no problem walking out at the end satisfied with my effort. I feel that their interview lacked validity, especially in the construct sense, and therefore reliability. Validity is the extent to which a performance measure assesses what it needs to measure. I personally do not feel that my on the spot situational answers are accurate depictions of my work ethic and social capabilities, especially in an environment that felt so uncomfortable. All other situations have felt more inviting and not so robotic or rehearsed. Because of this I do not believe that Target has the most reliable process in terms of consistency or dependability. If I was wanting to ensure that I was hiring quality employees, I would conduct interviews more open-mindedly and not judge based on a standard. I think taking an interest in trying to humanize the interviewee would go a long way for these kind of interviews.

References:

Swift, M. (2022, October). Introduction to Selection. [PowerPoint slides].

Swift, M. (2022, October). Selection Methods. [PowerPoint slides].