Interviews are a key component of the hiring process, but they don’t always reveal information about the candidates that the hiring firm needs to make a good decision.

 

Every interviewer thinks he or she can determine the best candidates, but research has consistently shown that relying on gut instinct or favorable impressions does not always produce the best hires, says Dr. Allen Huffcutt, an industrial and organizational psychology professor at Bradley University, who has studied interviewing and employee selection.

 

The best solution says Huffcutt is to use a structured interview, which tends to provide a much better level of accuracy in predicting job performance. The two most popular structured interview formats are situational interviews and behavior description interviews.

 

Situational questions contain hypothetical job situations, and candidates are asked to describe what they would do in those situations. Behavior description interviews seek to learn how candidates handled previous job-related situations, and often begin with “Tell me about a time when…”

 

But there’s more that can, and should be, learned about employment interviews, particularly in terms of what they actually measure. His latest study shows that only about a third of the characteristics measured in situational and behavior description interviews reflect basic mental ability, personality, and job knowledge, which leaves open the question about what else they measure.

 

To help identify what else is being measured, Huffcutt, along with colleagues Chad Van Iddekinge of Florida State University and Phil Roth of Clemson University, recently developed a detailed conceptual model of the characteristics interviews could measure.

 

They will be presenting their findings at the annual conference of The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology April 27-29 in New York City.

 

One of the more interesting aspects of their model is the component “interviewee performance,” which captures the notion that candidates will often perform or act during an interview and their performance can either help or hurt their ratings relative to their actual qualifications.

 

Interviews don’t always measure key job attributes because savvy candidates can manipulate their approach and their answers, Huffcutt says. Candidates can use sophisticated techniques to enhance the impression they make, like adjusting their communication style to match that of the interviewer, over-promoting past successes, and complementing the interviewer and/or his or her organization.

 

There is no shortage of resources providing job seekers with interview tips, including what kinds of questions they are likely to be asked. Some even hire coaches to lead them through the process.

 

To be truly effective, interviewers need to be able to recognize these impression-enhancing techniques, and determine whether or not they really relate to the job being filled. For some jobs, such as sales, these techniques could be important and should influence the ratings candidates receive. For other jobs, these skills are not needed and should not influence the ratings.

           

In summary, interviewing is a process of discovery and Huffcutt and other industrial organizational psychologists employ science to make interviewing more effective and accurate. Hiring the wrong person can be costly, and every effort should be made to ensure that the right people are employed in the right positions.

 

                                   

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For further information, contact Dr. Huffcutt at 309-677-2589 or email at huffcutt@bumail.bradley.edu

 

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is an international group of 6,600 industrial-organizational psychologists whose members study and apply scientific principles concerning people in the workplace. For more information about SIOP, including Media Resources, which lists nearly 2,000 experts in more than 100 topic areas, visit www.siop.org.