MGT 351

Interviewing Candidates
Chapter 07
 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
 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
 Types of Interviews
 Selection interview
◦ A selection procedure designed to predict
future job performance on the basis of
applicants’ oral responses to oral inquiries.

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

6–7
 Which Format to Use?
• Any guesses????
 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

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?
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.
 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)
 Behavioral Interview
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKBubKO-
798
 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

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?”
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-
1. see this pen I’m holding. Sell it to me
2. How would you evaluate me as an
interviewer?
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.
• 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.
 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?
 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.
 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”
 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.
 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”
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
 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
 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.
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.
 Your task
• Mr. Amin has a strong feeling that MGT 351.1 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
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
 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
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
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
 How to avoid the
interview errors
• Two ways
1. Keep them in mind and avoid them

2. 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
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
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)
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
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)
 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?
 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?
 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?
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
 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
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)
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
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?
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
“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
Thanks