{"id":3,"date":"2025-11-01T21:33:56","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/?p=3"},"modified":"2025-11-01T21:33:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:33:56","slug":"how-unstructured-interviews-made-me-feel-inauthentic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/2025\/11\/01\/how-unstructured-interviews-made-me-feel-inauthentic\/","title":{"rendered":"How Unstructured Interviews Made Me Feel Inauthentic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Thinking back on interviews I&#8217;ve been a part of, most of them leaned towards being ineffective because they depended heavily on unstructured conversation. A lot of times, I was asked a vague question like \u201cwhat challenge have you faced in life and how did you overcome it?\u201d Honestly, the <em>real<\/em> answers I would want to give would involve personal trauma, which seems unprofessional to talk about, and I don\u2019t feel is appropriate for an interview. But when I answer with the \u201csafer\u201d story (like playing soccer in high school), I always feel like I sound bland and unauthentic, almost like I haven\u2019t faced adversity or real challenges in life. That is the downside of unstructured interview questions. They are subjective, heavily interpretation-based, and not tied to actual job performance. From The Perfect Hire (Chamorro-Premuzic &amp; Steinmetz, 2013) research shows people tend to overestimate how well their intuition can predict success, even though it\u2019s a poor predictor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of my jobs have been in the restaurant industry where interviews are mostly just trying to feel about my personality and scheduling. I have 6 years of serving and 7 years bartending experience, and those interviews are usually direct: What is your availability? Where have you worked before? They aren\u2019t necessarily trying to measure job-related KSAOs in a scientific way. They\u2019re really just trying to confirm that I can handle the pace and that I won\u2019t create drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My more professional interviews, like for an engineering internship in Portland, felt more aligned with what we learned in class. They asked if I prefer working individually or in teams, and even asked if I enjoy games like Tetris and spatial orientation. At the time I didn\u2019t know what the \u201cright\u201d answer was supposed to be, but looking back now, those questions are closer to situational and personality indicators. If I could go back, I would advise all employers to move toward structured interviews, scoring guides, and adding work samples, because from 7 Practical Ways to Reduce Bias in Your Hiring Process (Knight, 2017), evidence shows those are more valid and reduce bias. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thinking back on interviews I&#8217;ve been a part of, most of them leaned towards being ineffective because they depended heavily on unstructured conversation. A lot of times, I was asked a vague question like \u201cwhat challenge have you faced in life and how did you overcome it?\u201d Honestly, the real answers I would want to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14970,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14970"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions\/4"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wk5matteson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}