When creating software designed to help managers conduct hiring campaigns as efficiently as possible, you are inevitably going to have a discussion on what might be the best techniques for conducting an interview.
Obviously the aim of an interview is to make a judgement on the worthiness of the interviewee. So during the discussions on how our software might help with the interview process, we asked as many people as we could how they conducted interviews so as to best make a judgement.
From the answers we got back, it was apparent that whilst many of the concepts were similar, most people seemed to have their own preferences and variations in the way they structured the interview.
We therefore decided to try and categorise the common threads that were noticeable in the answers and came up with some possible conclusions. All the people we asked said that they always conducted a face to face interview to make the final decision. Although many were open to the idea of conducting interviews by video, our conclusions assume some kind of meeting between interviewer(s) and interviewee.
First, a fairly obvious conclusion was made. I.E. The broad “structure” of an interview is influenced by various factors. Examples of the type of factors we detected were:
The seniority of the position to be filled
The number of candidates it was thought appropriate to interview
The number of interviewers attending the interview
The amount or type of preparation made before the interview
The “type” of questions the interviewer preferred to ask
Secondly, from the feedback we concluded there seemed to be two broad types of interview. We differentiated between these interview structures by calling them “Freehand” and “Structured”
Freehand Interviews
This interview type was defined where the interviewer(s) posed different questions to different applicants. As an example, the initial questions were derived from looking at the persons CV and further questions were asked as a direct result of the answers to previous questions.
Structured Interviews
Structured interviews were when all candidates were asked a minimum set of pre-prepared questions and the interviewer(s) made some kind of judgement on the answer to each question. Often, in structured interviews, the questions were linked to a category on which the interviewee was to be judged. For example a question or set of questions were prepared to help the interviewer judge the person on aspects such as experience, motivation, creative thinking, presentation, etc.
Thirdly we concluded that there were 4 broad categories of questions which were commonly used within the above interview structures.
Factual questions
Questions with a direct answer, such as current or expected salary, location and travel time, qualifications clarification, etc
Knowledge related questions or requests
Question designed to test the level of skill, experience or knowledge of the candidate. An example of this type of question might be – please explain your understanding of the government regulations on waste management for factories.
Theoretical situational or behavioural questions
This is where candidates are asked how they would react in various job-related situations. An example for a managerial position might be to ask the candidate to describe how they might handle an irate employee during a disciplinary procedure.
Historical situational or behavioural questions
This is where candidates are asked to describe how they handled various circumstances that might have occurred in prior job situations. Often the questions related to circumstances that they may encounter in the vacant position. An example of this type of question might be to ask the candidate’s normal technique to generate new sales opportunities.
Conclusions
The research and feedback was unfortunately not entirely conclusive. It did show us that more people preferred to use the structured interview approach. However there was no significant bias towards a preference for the type of questions asked in the interview. There was a common consensus that interviewers should start with a pre-prepared broad mix of question types, but be flexible enough to delve deeper into specific areas once strengths or weaknesses had been identified in the candidate