HRM textbook

CHAPTER 7 INTERVIEWING CANDIDATES 225
all their questions. 63 When interviewers have favorable pre-interview impressions
of the applicant, they tend to act more positively toward that person (smiling more,
for instance). 64 Other interviewers play district attorney, forgetting that it is uncivil to
play gotcha by gleefully pouncing on inconsistencies. Some interviewers play
amateur psychologist, unprofessionally probing for hidden meanings in everything
the applicant says. Others ask improper questions, forgetting, as one study found, that
discriminatory questions had a significant negative effect on participant s reactions
to the interview and interviewer. 65 And, some interviewers are simply inept, unable
to formulate decent questions.
In summary, interviewing errors to avoid include:
* First impressions (snap judgments)
* Not clarifying what the job involves and requires
* Candidate-order error and pressure to hire
* Nonverbal behavior and impression management
* The effects of interviewees personal characteristics
* The interviewer s inadvertent behaviors
3 Define a structured
situational interview.
HOW TO DESIGN AND CONDUCT AN
EFFECTIVE INTERVIEW
There are two basic ways to avoid interview errors. One is obvious: Keep them in mind
and avoid them (don t make snap judgments, for instance). The second is not so
obvious: Use structured interviews. The single biggest rule for conducting effective
selection interviews is to structure the interview around job-relevant situational and
behavioral questions. We ll look next at how to do this.
Designing a Structured Situational Interview
There is little doubt that the structured situational interview a series of job-relevant
questions with predetermined answers that interviewers ask of all applicants for the
job produces superior results. 66 Ideally, the basic idea is to write situational (what
would you do), behavioral (what did you do), or job knowledge questions, and have job
experts (like those supervising the job) also write answers for these questions, rated
from good to poor. The people who interview and rate the applicants then use rating
sheets anchored with examples of good or bad answers to rate the interviewees
answers. 67 The procedure is as follows. 68
STEP 1: ANALYZE THE JOB Write a job description with a list of job duties;
required knowledge, skills, and abilities; and other worker qualifications.
STEP 2: RATE THE JOB S MAIN DUTIES Rate each job duty, say from 1 to 5,
based on its importance to job success.
STEP 3: CREATE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Create interview questions for
each of the job duties, with more questions for the important duties. Recall that
situational questions pose a hypothetical job situation, such as What would you do if
the machine suddenly began heating up? Job knowledge questions assess knowledge
essential to job performance (such as What is HTML? ). Willingness questions gauge
the applicant s willingness and motivation to meet the job s requirements to do
repetitive physical work or to travel, for instance. Behavioral questions, of course, ask
candidates how they ve handled similar situations.
structured situational interview
A series of job-relevant questions with
predetermined answers that interviewers ask
of all applicants for the job.