I have had a decent amount of interviews for entry level jobs, to reflect on my past experiences with these interviews I would say the majority of them seemed less professional than I was expecting. Many of the interviews I have had were unstructured interviews; according to the lecture for this week we learned that unstructured interviews have no fixed set of questions asked of all applicants and no systematic scoring procedures. Unstructured interview procedures can be beneficial in terms of asking questions that seem relevant depending on the person and getting to know potential employees in a less structural way. Although unstructured interviews can also be non-beneficial if too few questions are asked, or questions that did not pertain to the nature of the job enough. In the lecture this week we also learned about steps to conducting an interview, for example: preparation includes identifying a private location in order to conduct the interview. I had a negative experience with this a few years ago when I was brought into the middle of the store in which I was applying for, and seated at a public table which was part of a display with people stepping around us to shop. It was a very awkward experience, and a private location is usually a better option for conducting interviews. 

If I could go back and advise those employers on how to improve the effectiveness of their interviews, I would advise them to improve their selection utility. Selection utility is the extent to which a selection procedure is worth the time and money; I feel the places I have interviewed with in the past could have spent more money in order to provide a private space to conduct interviews. I feel the interview could have had a lot more potential for success if the location was better, and their interviews were more structured. Perhaps the company could have even spent the money to train their current employees on better interview methods, and they would save money/time in the long run because they would have better capabilities to hire for success. 

Citations:

Bohnet , I. (2018) How to Take the Bias out of Interviews (Links to an external site.), Harvard Business Review

Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Steinmetz, C. (2013). The perfect hire Links to an external site. Scientific American Mind , 24 (3), 42-47

Get a job at Google (Links to an external site.) (web link to article on the New York Times)