I\u2019ve had a total of four interviews up to this point in my life. My first one was for Burgerville When I was a senior in highschool, about 10 years ago so I don\u2019t remember it too well. More recently I have had interviews with construction companies like Knife River, Wildish, and Sierra. Each one felt really different in terms of how structured or effective they were. The Sierra Construction interview honestly didn\u2019t feel like much of an interview at all. It was only 10 minutes, and because they already knew my dad, they just wanted to see if I would be late to the interview. From a hiring standpoint, that\u2019s very low on both reliability and validity. According to The Perfect Hire, reliable interviews should collect consistent info across candidates, and this one didn\u2019t do that at all. No one else applying for the same role would\u2019ve had the same experience as me, which doesn\u2019t make it very fair either. But I\u2019m not complaining because it worked in my favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Knife River interview was much better. It was in front of a panel and included a scenario question about scheduling, which was actually kind of fun. This lined up with the idea from the 7 Practical Ways to Reduce Bias in Your Hiring Process article, where it says work sample tests are one of the best ways to predict job performance. That felt true here and they were more focused on how I thought and less on my background. It was probably the most valid and useful interview I\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The interview I had with Wildish Construction was more like a conversation than a formal interview. I met with the CEO and the Operations Director, and we just talked for about an hour. They mostly wanted to get to know me as a person, not really test my skills or knowledge. It felt personal and welcoming, which I liked, but looking back it wasn\u2019t very structured. Based on what I\u2019ve learned, that kind of unstructured interview isn\u2019t super reliable because there\u2019s no consistent way to compare candidates. It would\u2019ve been more effective if they added a few standardized questions or a simple work sample to balance the casual dynamic with something more job related.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I could go back and give advice to these companies, I\u2019d tell Sierra to use more structured interview questions and avoid relying on personal connections. For Wildish, I liked the long conversation with the CEO and Operations Director and it had a relaxed, personal feel, but I would suggest mixing that with a work sample or some standardized questions to make the process more balanced and job focused. Knife River\u2019s interview came closest to what I\u2019ve learned makes an interview effective, with a panel format and a scenario that actually tested my skills. I would tell them all that keeping structure and consistency across their interviews would help reduce bias and help them make better hiring decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve had a total of four interviews up to this point in my life. My first one was for Burgerville When I was a senior in highschool, about 10 years ago so I don\u2019t remember it too well. More recently I have had interviews with construction companies like Knife River, Wildish, and Sierra. Each one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14809,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14809"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mgmt453spring25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}