Interview types and techniques

 


The interview is the most familiar method of selection and the aim is to elicit information about candidates that will enable a calculation to be made about how well the candidate will do the job and lead to a selection decision (Armstrong, 2014). An interview is a process of private conversation between two people, where questions are asked and answers are found and the main purpose of the interview is to acquire information about qualities, attitudes, prospectus and so forth which gathers by below types of interviews (Kapur,2008).

Structured Interview – Structured interview is planned, designed and detailed in advance and reliable in hiring the candidates.

Unstructured Interview - The interviewers are not well prepared regarding the questions that are to be ask from the candidate. The usefulness of the interview is less and there is a waste of time and effort to a large extent to both interviewer and the candidate.

Group Interview - All the candidates or a group of candidates are interviewed together. Group interview is to save time, where a subject will be given to the candidates to get engaged in group discussions and the interviewer judges the innovativeness and behaviour of each candidate within the group.

Depth Interview - Depth interview enables the interviewer to obtain detailed information of the candidate such as; educational qualifications, work experience, special interests and skills which the selection process becomes more manageable.

Stress Interview - Stress interviews are conducted to discover how a candidate would react during the time of stress and cope up with problems and the candidate who can control during a stress interview is normally the right person to handle a stressful job. Interviewer may make use of open-ended and close-ended questions which involve one-word answers, such as yes or no.

Informal Interview - The interview will be stable without any written communication between the individuals and takes place in a friendly manner.

Formal Interview - The candidate will be aware about the dates and timings of the interview in advance and the interviewer plans and prepares the questions for the interview. The interviewee is supposed to provide accurate answers to all the questions asked by the interviewer.

Panel Interview – The interview will be conducted by a group of people. The selection committee will be asking questions to the candidates on various concepts and the final decision of selecting the candidates will be taken by all the members of the panel after discussing together.

Exit Interview - Exit interviews are conducted for those employees, who want to leave the organization and to discover the reasons behind leaving the job. Main reasons for the employees to leave the jobs are transfer to another location, health problems, promotional opportunities in other organizations, availability of rewards and incentives in other organizations or family issues.

There re much more various types of interviews than stated above. Qualitative methods frequently rely on interviews with comparatively few individuals with special characteristics (Patton, 2002). Scanlon et al (2018) conducted research on the frequency and the effectiveness of the interview techniques and from the research, reported that 75% frequent use structured interviews and 88% of the respondents found effective (Buang, 2018)

The behavioural-based interview can be easily realized (Pulakos, & Schmitt, 1995). Once the organization makes a list of the sample questions for each required job competency, it will be able to be implemented. Motowidlo et al. (1992) pointed out that behavioural-based interview considered more valid and dependable than traditional interviewing methods which will be able to predict a candidate’s potential for success. The researchers mentioned that the behavioural-based interview questions can be well structured and be planned in advance (Motowidlo et al., 1992).

Wickramasinghe (2007) revealed that the Sri Lankan companies highly rely on interviews as a selection method and many of the characteristic problems of interviewing reduced due to the use of panel interviews and a number of stages in the selection process.


List of References

Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S. Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. (2014) 13th Edition, London: Kogan Page, p.236.

Buang.A., Seng.L.S., Sum.V.L.W., (2018) The needs of Change in Job Interview: Compassionate Assessment and Interview, Open Journal of Human Resource Management, Volume 1, Issue 1 [online] Available at: https://www.sryahwapublications.com/open-journal-of-human-resource-management/pdf/v1-i1/4.pdf [Accessed on 17 August 2022]

Kapur,R., (2018). Recruitment and Selection, University of Delhi, India [Online]. Available at www.researchgate.net/publication/323829919_Recruitment_and_Selection. [Accessed on 9 August 2022]

Motowidlo, S. J., Carter, G. W., Dunnette, M. D., Tippins, N., Werner, S., Burnett, J. R., & Vaughan, M. J. (1992). Studies of the structured behavioural interview, Journal of Applied Psychology.

Patton MQ (2002) Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Pulakos, E. D., & Schmitt, N. (1995). Experience‐based and situational interview questions: Studies of validity. Personnel Psychology.

Wickramasinghe,V., (2007) Staffing practices in the private sector in Sri Lanka, Department of Management of Technology, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, 12(2&3), 108-128 [online] Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235265292_Staffing_practices_in_the_private_sector_in_Sri_Lanka [Accessed 10 August 2022]

  




Comments

  1. Janith De SilvaSeptember 6, 2022 at 10:33 AM

    According to Wickramasinghe (2007) have mentioned that "Sri Lankan companies highly rely on interviews as a selection method". What are the advantages when conducting a physical interviews over other interview methods?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shanaz SamseerSeptember 14, 2022 at 5:12 AM

      Face to face interviewing a candidate will be more help on accurate screening, can be indicate a level of interest for the topics being discussed in the interview, also captures emotions and behaviors. But then again face to face interview will be more appropriate if, the interviewer has enough budget and travelling or the interviewees lives close by and standardisation of the interview situation is important (Opdenakker, 2006).

      Delete
  2. U.D.S. KalpaniSeptember 16, 2022 at 4:10 PM

    Interviewing is an important step in the employee selection process. If done effectively, the interview enables the employer to determine if an applicant's skills, experience, and personality meet the job's requirements. Recruitment is the process of finding and engaging 
    the people the organization needs. Selection is the part of the recruitment process concerned with deciding which applicants or candidates should be appointed to jobs (Armstrong, 2014). Recruitment can be costly, so what are the methods that can be used as best to reduce the cost?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shanaz SamseerSeptember 16, 2022 at 10:04 PM

      Social media, Blogs, Videos, Wikis, Fora and chat rooms have allowed individuals to share information and experiences online (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier, 2009). employees can build their profiles on Social Networking Sites, search for information on a company to see organizational structures and cultures, and exchange information with employers but potentially with existing employees (Adele and Buhalis, n,d). Individuals can use social media to boost their job searching techniques for greater efficiency, for example using professional networking groups such as LinkedIn, or sites that host online CV and other job related content that is shared by recruiters (Maul and Wallins, 2010).

      Delete

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