1. MGT 351
Interviewing Candidates Chapter 07

2. Why Interview? Interviews are most widely used selection tool
Not all managers use tests (e.g. personality, situational, cognitive) and reference checks
However, it would be highly unusual not to conduct the interview session prior to hiring
Unfortunately, 34% of the interviewers have formal training

3. Basic Features of Interviews
An interview
A procedure designed to obtain information from a person through oral responses to oral inquiries
Two parties are involved- interviewer and interviewee
Types of interviews
Selection interview
Appraisal interview
Exit interview

4. Types of Interviews Selection interview Interviews formats
A selection procedure designed to predict future job performance on the basis of applicants’ oral responses to oral inquiries.
Interviews formats
Structured
Unstructured

5. Formats of Interviews Unstructured or nondirective interview
An unstructured conversational-style interview in which the interviewer pursues points of interest as they come up in response to questions.
No set format
A few questions could be specified beforehand

6. Formats of Interview (cont.)
Structured or directive interview
An interview following a set sequence of questions
The questions also contain the answer for appropriateness

7. Structured Interview
1. How did you choose this line of work? 2. What did you enjoy most about the last job? 3. What did you like least about the last job? 4. What are some of the pluses and minuses of your last job? 5. How did you leave the last job? 6. Did you give notice prior to leaving? 7. Why should you be hired by us? 8. What do you expect from this employer? 10. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

8. Which Format to Use?
Any guesses????

9. Which format to use? Structured interviews are superior
All applicants are asked the same questions. Hence the procedure is reliable and valid
Interviewers with low competencies can conduct the interviews
Reduces subjectivity and potential of biasness

10. Interview Content: Types of Questions
Situational interview
A series of job-related questions that focus on how the candidate would behave in a given situation.
For example, as a supervisor, how would you act in response to a subordinate coming to work late 3 days in a row?

11. Interview Content: Types of Questions
Behavioral interview
A series of job-related questions that focus on how they reacted to actual situations in the past
Situational interviews ask candidates to respond to the hypothetical situation today. By contrast, behavioral interviews invite the candidates to describe the actual situations in the past.
For example, tell me about a time when you were dealing with a person who was late 3 days in a row.

12. Distinction
Situational interview: How would you respond to a faulty delivery complaint? (It is a hypothetical situation)
Behavioral interview: Tell me about a time you were dealing with a faulty delivery (real situation)

13. Behavioral Interview
798

14. Let’s face a situational interview!
Read the situations carefully
Find out the most effective answers
You may also find out the least effective ones

15. Interview Content: Types of Questions
Job-related interview
A series of job-related questions that focus on relevant past experiences
The candidates won’t be asked to respond to hypothetical or real situations
They will be asked relevant job-related or education-related question
“What was your favorite course at NSU Business School?”

16. Interview Content: Types of Questions
Stress interview
An interview in which the interviewer seeks to make the applicant uncomfortable with occasionally rude questions that supposedly to spot sensitive applicants and those with low or high stress tolerance
Example-
see this pen I’m holding. Sell it to me
How would you evaluate me as an interviewer?

17. Interview Content: Types of Questions
Puzzle interviews
Recruiters for technical, finance, and other types of jobs use questions to pose problems requiring unique (“out-of-the-box”) solutions to see how candidates think under pressure.
You have two identical eggs. Standing in front of a 100 floor building, you wonder what is the maximum number of floors from which the egg can be dropped without breaking it.

18. Answer: The easiest way to do this would be to start from the first floor and drop the egg. If it doesn’t break, move on to the next floor. If it does break, then we know the maximum floor the egg will survive is 0. If we continue this process, we will easily find out the maximum floors the egg will survive with just one egg. So the maximum number of tries is 100 that is when the egg survives even at the 100th floor.

19. Home Work Puzzle question
In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

20. Errors Affecting Interviews
First impressions
The tendency for interviewers to jump to conclusions—make snap judgments—about candidates during the first few minutes of the interview.
Negative bias: unfavorable information about an applicant influences interviewers more than does positive information.

21. Errors Affecting Interviews (cont.)
“Really, to make a good impression, you don’t even get time to open your mouth. An interviewer’s response to you will generally be preverbal- how you walk through the door, what your posture is like, whether you smile, whether you have a captivating aura, whether you have a firm, confident handshake. You have got about half a minute to make an impact and after that you are doing is building on a good or bad first impression. It’s a very emotional response”

22. Errors Affecting Interviews (cont.)
Misunderstanding the job
Not knowing precisely what the job entails (job description) and what sort of candidate is best suited (job specification) causes interviewers to make decisions based on incorrect stereotypes of what a good applicant is.
Candidate-order error
An error of judgment on the part of the interviewer due to interviewing one or more very good or very bad candidates just before the interview in question.

23. Errors Affecting Interviews (cont.)
Nonverbal behavior and impression management
Interviewers’ inferences of the interviewee’s personality from the way he or she acts in the interview have a large impact on the interviewer’s rating of the interviewee.
Clever interviewees attempt to manage the impression they present to persuade interviewers to view them more favorably
It certainly seems to pay interviewees to “look alive”

24. Factors Affecting Interviews (cont.)
Halo effect - Halo effect occurs when an interviewer allows one strong point about the candidate to overshadow everything else
Horn effect - The horn effect is just the opposite - Allowing one weak point to influence everything else

25. Factors Affecting Interviews (cont.)
Effect of personal characteristics: attractiveness, gender, race
Interviewers tend have a less favorable view of candidates who are:
Physically unattractive
Female
Of a different racial background
Disabled

26. Factors Affecting Interviews (cont.)
Interviewer behaviors affecting interview outcomes
Inadvertently telegraphing expected answers
Talking so much that applicants have no time to answer questions
Letting the applicant dominate the interview
Acting more positively toward a favored (or similar to the interviewer) applicant.

27. A Role-playing Exercise
Mr. Russel Willims, the HR manager at John Lewis, is worried about the performance of his interviewers. He has a strong feeling that the interviewers make some mistakes whilst conducting the interviews. In order to resolve the problem, he has approached Mr. Al-Amin who is currently teaching HR at NSU Business School. Mr. Russel wants Mr. Amin to send a group of 4 students to John Lewis in order to conduct a role- playing session that would show his employees the common mistakes of an interviewer.

28. Your task
Mr. Amin has a strong feeling that MGT is consisted of a bunch of brilliant students who have already nailed the interviewing concepts.
Therefore, he would like to ask you to form a group of 4 people in order to conduct the role-playing exercise.
He would send the best group to John Lewis
Whilst forming the group, please bear in mind that 3 members will take the role of the interviewers while the 4th member will act as a candidate
The exercise calls you to cover at least five interview errors

29. How should we administer the interview?
One-to-one interview
Two people meet alone and one party (the interviewer) involves obtaining information from other (interviewee) through oral responses
Generally they are conducted sequentially
Several persons interview the candidates, in sequence, one-to-one, and then make their recruiting decisions

30. How should we administer the interview? (cont.)
Panel interview/ board interview
The team of interviewers together interview the applicants
The team is consisted of 3to 6 members
Mass interview
A panel interviews several candidates simultaneously
The panel gives a problem and then observes which candidate takes the lead in formulating the answer

31. How should we administer the interview? (cont.)
Phone interview
Employees do some interviews entirely on the phone
Thy can be more accurate than face-to-face interviews
Neither party need worry about appearance, gesture, posture and handshake
Studies show that interviewers tend to evaluate the candidates more favorably on the phone as compared to face-to-face interviews

32. How should we administer the interview? (cont.)
Computerized selection interview
An interview in which a job candidate’s oral and/or computerized replies are obtained in response to computerized oral, visual, or written questions and/or situations.
Presents series of questions regarding the experience, skills ad education of the applicants
Presents question in a multiple-choice format
Presents video clips as well

33. How to avoid the interview errors
Two ways 1. Keep them in mind and avoid them Use structured interviews - Structure the interview around j0b-relevant situational, and behavioral questions - Interviewers need to develop situational, behavioral and job knowledge and write answers for these questions - The interviewer then use the answer sheet to rate the interviewees answers

34. Avoid interview errors by designing effective interviews
Step 1: Job Analysis - Establish a job description and a job specification
Step 2: Rate the Job’s Main Duties - Identify job’s main duties - Rate each job duty based on its importance to job success

35. Avoid interview errors by designing effective interviews (cont.)
Step 3: Create Interview Questions based on job duties - Situational questions (hypothetical current situations) - Behavioral questions (past real situations) - Job Knowledge question (job-related essenttial knowledge)

36. Avoid interview errors by designing effective interviews (cont.)
Example- Q. your spouse and two teenage children are sick in bed with colds. There are no relatives or friends available to look after them. Your shift start in 3 hours. What would you do in this situation?
a. I’d stay home as family comes first b. I’d phone my supervisor and explain the situation c. Since they had only colds, I would come to work

37. Avoid interview errors by designing effective interviews (cont.)
Step 4: Create Benchmark Answers - Establish a benchmark answers for each question - For good (a 5 rating), marginal (a 3 rating), and poor (a 1 rating)
a. I’d stay home as family comes first (1) b. I’d phone my supervisor and explain the situation (3) c. Since they had only colds, I would come to work (5)

38. Examples of Questions That Provide Structure
Situational Questions:
1. Suppose a co-worker was not following standard work procedures. The co-worker was more experienced than you and claimed the new procedure was better. Would you use the new procedure?
2. Suppose you were giving a sales presentation and a difficult technical question arose that you could not answer. What would you do?

39. Examples of Questions That Provide Structure (cont.)
Past Behavior Questions:
1. Based on your past work experience, what is the most significant action you have ever taken to help out a co-worker?
2. Can you provide an example of a specific instance where you developed a sales presentation that was highly effective?

40. Examples of Questions That Provide Structure (cont.)
Job Knowledge Questions:
1. What steps would you follow to conduct a brainstorming session with a group of employees on safety?
2. What factors should you consider when developing a television advertising campaign?

41. Avoid interview errors by designing effective interviews (cont.)
Step 5: Appoint the Interview Panel and Conduct Interviews - Use a panel rather than one-to-one while conducting the structured interview - The panel is consisted of 3-6 members - It includes the ones who wrote the questions and answers - One panel member asks all questions of all applicants - All panel members record and rate the answers

42. How to conduct an effective job?
Step 1: Make sure you know the job - Job duties and human skills - Study the job description and specification
Step 2: Structure the interview - Use base, job knowledge, situational and behavioral questions - study the job well in order to evaluate the answer of the candidates - Use same questions (the more standardized, the better) - Use Descriptive rating scale (good, fair, poor) - Have several ideal answers and a score for each question

43. How to conduct an effective job? (cont.)
Step 3: Get organized - Interview should take place in a private room where telephone calls are not allowed - Minimize interruption - Prior to the interview review the applications and resumes of the candidates - A study of 191 respondents showed that 39% of the interviewers were nor prepared
Step 4: Establish rapport - Create a comfortable atmosphere for the interviewees - Greet the candidate and start the interview by asking noncontroversial questions (weather or traffic condition)

44. How to conduct an effective job? (cont.)
Step 5: Ask Questions - Try to follow the situational, behavioral and job knowledge questions you wrote ahead of time
Don’ts- 1. Don’t ask questions that the candidates can answer with a yes or no 2. Don’t telegraph the desired answer 3. Don’t let the applicant dominate the interview
Dos: 1. Do ask open-ended question 2. Do listen to the candidate to the candidates 3. Do ask for examples 4. Do draw out applicant’s opinion

45. How to conduct an effective job? (cont.)
Step 6: Take a brief note during the interview - Doing so may help avoid making a snap decision based on inadequate information
Step 7: Close the interview
- Try to end the interview on a positive note - Tell the applicant whether there is any interest - Make rejections diplomatically (example- “Although your background is impressive, there are other candidates whose experience is closer to our requirements.” - If you are undecided, tell so - If you need to write to the candidates, do so within a few days - Should you provide an explanation whilst rejecting?

46. How to conduct an effective job? (cont.)
Step 8: Review the interview -After the candidates leave review your interview notes - Score the interview guide answers - Review interview while it’s fresh

47. “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”– Thomas John Watson Sr., IBM
“Human Resources isn’t a thing we do. It’s the thing that runs our business.”– Steve Wynn

48. Thanks