Chapter 6 Selection Interviews

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Chapter 6Selection Interviews
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What are the objectives of a job interview?

• Recruiting applicant to the organization
• Communicating information about job to applicant
• Measuring applicant KSAs
• Determining match between organization and
  applicant
• Getting to know applicant
• Can be used either as a general screening or more
  stringently as a formal selection procedure

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Traditional Interviews

• First impressions more important than factual
  information.
• Evaluations of a candidate are influenced by the
  quality of previous candidates.
• Applicants who demonstrate greater eye contact
  more likely to be hired.
• Unattractive candidates less likely to be hired.
• Overweight candidates less likely to be hired.

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Traditional Interviews

• Interviewers give more positive evaluations to
  people they perceive to be similar to themselves.
• Interpersonal attraction between candidate and
  interviewer influences evaluations.
• Interviewers judge candidates against their own
  stereotype of an ideal candidate.
• Interviewers weight negative information more
  heavily than positive information.

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Traditional Interviews

• Interviewers weight information differently than
  other interviewers.
• Interviewers reach a decision about a candidate
  within approximately 4 minutes.
• Experienced interviewers are no more reliable or
  valid than inexperienced interviewers.
• Without taking notes, interviewers remember about
  half of the information they receive in a
  20-minute interview.

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Traditional Interviews

• Why are traditional interviews so bad?
• Low Reliability
• Different interviewers ask different questions
  and get different answers from applicants
• The same interviewers may ask different
  applicants different questions
• If interviews are not reliable, they cant be
  valid.
• Only way to increase validity is to begin with
  reliability.
• Standardize questions
• Standardize scoring procedure

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Common Interview Questions

• How would you describe yourself?
• Why should we hire you?
• What do you expect to be doing in 5 years?
• Tell me what you know about our company.
• What do you do in your spare time?

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Structured Interviews

• Questions are job relevant
• Ask the same questions
• Have predetermined scoring system
• Train interviewers
• Asking questions
• Prompting
• Recording

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Structured Interviews

• Structured interviews have much higher validity
  than traditional interviews. Because they are
• Reliable (consistent questions/scoring)
• Job-related
• Behavioral Description Interviews have slightly
  higher validity than Situational Interviews.

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Recommendations for Use of Interviews

• Make interviews structured (e.g., same
  predetermined Qs for all use of behavioral
  anchors, standardized scoring formats)
• Provide training on how to conduct interviews
  (e.g., how to probe, take notes) and what errors
  to be aware of
• Restrict use of interview to most job-relevant
  KSAs

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Recommendations for Use of Interviews

• Limit the use of pre-interview data about
  applicants
• Use job-related questions
• Use multiple questions for each KSA
• Use interview in conjunction with other selection
  methods
• When highly structured and highly job-related,
  validity can approach .45 to .50

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Determining Interview Content

• Determine performance criteria by
  systematically collecting information about
• Job tasks/responsibilities
• Job context
• Competencies Knowledge, skills, abilities,
  interests, motivations, and other characteristics
  that are required to perform job
• Desired performance outcomes (results) and what
  individual should do to achieve them
• Critical incidents identifying incidents that
  are essential to good performance, or that
  distinguish good from poor performers can be
  used to develop interview questions

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Interview Focus Experience-based or Behavioral
Questions

• Situation What was the situation the candidate
  faced?
• Behavior What did the candidate do or say?
• Outcome What was the result of those behaviors?

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Behavioral Question Example

• Tell me about a time when you made an important
  decision too quickly. What were the consequences
  of that decision? Would you do anything
  differently?
• Assesses the competency of problem-solving
• Looks for results, including learning

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Rating Behavioral Responses

• Define desired responses in advance, based on
  organizational input
• The best responses accurately reflect the
  performance criteria
• The more recent the behavior, the greater its
  predictive power.
• The more longstanding/frequent the behavior, the
  greater its predictive power.
• Verifiable behaviors are more likely to be
  accurate.

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Interview Focus Future-oriented or Situational
Question

• Situation Create/describe the situation the
  candidate would face
• Behavior Determine what the candidate says they
  would do or say

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Situational Question Example

• Two of your employees have had a serious
  disagreement, which resulted in a shouting match.
  How would you respond to such a situation?
• Assesses the competency of managing people
• Key issues that response should address are
  defined in advance, based on expectations of your
  organization

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Evaluating Interview Effectiveness

• Subjective or soft metrics
• Interviewee perceptions
• Manager satisfaction
• Objective or hard metrics
• Performance changes in business unit
• Correlation with performance evaluation data
• Turnover

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Types of Interviewer Errors

• Leniency, severity, central tendency scoring
  everyone too easily, harshly, etc.
• Halo one or two global characteristics
  influence overall evaluation
• Contrast quality of preceding applicants
  influences evaluation
• Primacy (aka first impression error) making
  evaluation of applicant within the first minutes
  of interview
• Similar-to-me making favorable evaluations due
  to similarity to interviewer in some way

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Examples of Legal Cases Involving Interviews

• Watson v. Fort Worth Bank (1988) any device used
  for selection or promotion cannot be discriminant
• King v. TWA (1984) females did not receive same
  questions as males
• Robbins v White-Wilson Medical Clinic (1981) no
  guidelines for conducting or scoring interviews
• Most important characteristic to avoid litigation
  is to make interviews objective job-related