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

 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
• [Link]
BubKO-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
 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