Interviewing

Interviews are the most popular predictors, are given the most weight, are very expensive and time-consuming, and are commonly misused.

In general, work samples are the best, but structured interviews are good predictors of future job performance as well.

Types of Interviews

Types of interviews:

• unstructured
• structured
  • situational
  • behavior description interview
• stress interview

Unstructured Interviews

Characteristics of unstructured interviews:

• Interviewer can ask any questions they wish. The logic of questioning is up to the interviewer
• There is no systematic scoring rubric
• It's difficult to compare applicants; subject to impressions and guesses.

The research evidence:

• judgements are formed in the first 4-5 minutes; first impressions are weighted heavily
• interviewers are more influenced by unfavorable (negative information).
• the more the interviewer talks, the more favorable the applicants is rated
  • people like hearing themselves talk, or maybe the interviewer is asking good questions.
• similar-to-me effects and contrast effects are stronger than in other situations
  • people like to find similarities

Structured Interviewers

Interview is based on key topics that are job related

Interviewers asks all applicants:

• predetermined questions
• standardized administration
• predetermined set of scoring, format, and rules.

Provide structure to an interview greatly improves the validity of the selection decision.

Format of the structured interview:

• Applicant has one interview with one interviewer
• Applicant may be interviewed by several different people separately.
• Panel interview

Research evidence on structured interviews:

• interviewers had more confidence in the process
• interviewees believe it has face validity
• courts view structured interview techniques more favorably
• less subject to rater errors.

To create a situational interview, identify specific activities representative of the job, develop critical incidents (which are descriptions of work behavior that have actually occurred and are examples of good/poor performance), use this information to form questions that ask applicants how they would behave in the situation.

To create a behavior description interview, use same steps 1-2 as situational interview: identify specific activities representative of the job, develop critical incidents. Then, identify the skills and experience required for success. Use this information to form questions that ask applicants how they have behaved in a previous situation. Focus on an applicant's past experience with a particular event, and their actual behavior in that situation. This is good because past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

These interviews ask for specific examples of a candidate's past experience:

• "tell me about a time when..."
• "share with me when..."
• "give me an example of a situation when..."
• "when have you been..."

Situational vs Behavioral Predictive Validity:

• these two types are only moderately correlated (.40-.47)
• behaviorally-based interviews are more strongly correlated with cognitive ability measures than are situational interviews
• situational interviews are more strongly correlated with job performance than are behaviorally-based interviews (.23 vs .18)
• therefore, the two types of questioning are not interchangeable and might be best used in combination.
• average validity was .34-.51 for structured as opposed to .17 for unstructures.

What KSAO's might be best evaluated using the interview techniques?

• Not typically to assess skills and abilities.
• oral, listening, interpersonal skills, decision making, problem solving, stress tolerance, organizational skills, leadership, etc
• Competency in communication, problem solving, taking initiative, leadership, working under pressure

To develop behavioral interview questions look at this bank of 2000 behavioral questions.

How to respond to behavioral based interview questions?

• the STAR technique (situation, task, action, results).
• non-verbal behavior: eye contact (seen as a form of confidence and integrity), head movement, smiling (implies interest), hand movement, general body posture.
• have a portfolio of activities.
• Barrick et al 2010 journal showed that how candidates came across to the interviewer have been found to be predictive of internship offers and performance on the formal interviews.

Considerations:

• Validity: Situations presented in structured interview questions are highly representative of the situation encountered on the job (i.e., a high degree of content validity), performance on structured interviews relates highly to performance on the job (i.e., a high degree of criterion-related validity), and show moderate relationships with measures of cognitive ability and personality (i.e., construct validity); Can add validity beyond other selection measures (i.e., a high degree of incremental validity), such as cognitive ability and personality variables
• Face Validity/Applicant Reactions - Face Validity/Applicant Reactions – Interviews typically result in more favorable applicant reactions compared to other popular selection measures, however, interviewers and applicants tend to favor less structured formats
• Administration Method - Individual administration only; Can be conducted face-to-face or over the telephone or via video conference
• Subgroup Differences - Generally little or no performance differences are found between men/women or applicants of different races; Some differences in interviewer ratings have been found for different races (dependent on race of candidate and interviewer(s), job complexity, and types of questions asked
• Development Costs - Costs are generally low and depend on the complexity of the job, the number of questions used, dimensions measured, and development and administration of interviewer/rater training
• Administration Costs - Typically not costly to administer but may depend on costs related to train interviewers, rater time required, and number of applicants to assess
• Utility/ROI - High return on investment if you need applicants who possess specific, critical competencies upon entry into the job; If the competencies measured by the interview can be learned on the job or are not highly critical, then the return on investment will be significantly lower
• Common Uses - Used for recruitment, selection and promotion purposes; Frequently used late in the assessment process as a final screen or in situations where the applicant pool is moderate or small in size

Advantages:

• High validity and face validity for applicants
• Multiple ratings/consensus leads to increased reliability
• Useful for determining if the applicant has requisite communication or social skills which may be necessary for the job
• Can be used for selection among equally qualified applicants
• Allows the applicant to ask questions that may reveal additional information useful for making a selection decision
• Legally defensible compared to unstructured, conventional interview

Disadvantages:

• Requires SME involvement to develop
• Resource intensive administration and rating process
• Subjective evaluations are made if less structured
• Assessors must be trained
• Research has shown disproportionate rates of selection between minority and non-minority members using interviews
• Not as reliable as tests.

Interview Errors

What questions are allowed to be asked? Avoid asking questions related to protected categories such as age, disability, pregnancy, religion, military service, sexual orientation, color, national origin, race, gender, martial status, criminal history.

Inconsistency in questioning should be avoided because asking different questions to each candidate lead to a skewed assessment of who would best perform the job.

Varying standards: use different standards for different candidates.

Similar-to-me or different-from-me means using yourself as a yardstick (gender, race, hobbies, alumnae, geographical backgrounds)

First impressions: tendency of brain to continue seeing an individual in the same light as it did when they made their first impression

Negative emphasis: the rejection of a candidate based on a small amount of negative information (research has shown that interviewers give unfavorable information about twice the weight of favorable information).

Stereotypes and biases: allowing personal biases to affect decisions

Halo/horn effects: allowing one skill or characteristic about a candidate positive or negative overly influence your decision.

Serial-position effects: letting the order of candidates influence your ratings. Be aware of the following:

• primacy effect: tendency to focus on, recall information, and favor candidates who interview first.
• recency effect: tendency to remember and favor applicants that interviewed most recently or last
• contrast effect: strong(er) candidates who interview after weak(er) ones may appear more qualified than they are because of their contrast.

Lack of differentiation among candidates: interviewer fails to distinguish among good and poor candidates.

• leniency
• severity
• central tendency

To avoid these interview erros:

1. train all individuals on the interview process
2. create an open-communication atmosphere
3. delivery questions consistently
4. maintain control of the interview
5. develop good speech behavior
6. learn listening skills
7. take appropriate notes
8. keep the conversation flowing and avoid leading or intimidating the interviewee.
9. Interpreting, ignoring, or controlling the nonverbal cues of the interview
10. evaluate candiates immediately following the interview.