Interviewing & Selecting Candidates
Interviewing of Candidates
An interview is a determined exchange of notions, the answering of questions and communication between two or more persons (Kapoor, R 2018). Normally, an interview is a process of private conversation between people, where questions are asked and answers are obtained. The main purpose of the interviews is to acquire information about qualities, attitudes, prospectus and so forth. In various types of interviews, interviewers examine the behavior and communication abilities of the candidates (Kapoor, R 2018). An interview refers to a discussion with one or more persons acting as the role of an interviewer, who ask questions and the person, who answers the questions acts as the role of an interviewee. The primary purpose of an interview is to transfer information from interviewee to interviewer. Interviews can be either formal or informal, structured or unstructured. Interviews can be performed on a one-to-one basis or in groups, they can be conducted over telephone or through video conferencing (Richardson, M 2017).
Types of Interviews
In the corporate world, according to Kapoor (2018) 10 types of interviewing methods can be seen and is as follows. According to the requirements of the job vacancy, the type of interview can be varied from organization to organization.
1. Structured Interviews - The interview is planned, designed and detailed in advance. A structured interview is pre-planned, precise, and reliable in hiring the candidates.
2. Unstructured Interviews - The interviewers are not well prepared regarding the questions that are to be asked and in obtaining accurate answers. The effectiveness is much lower in this type of interview.
3. Group Interviews - In this method, all the candidates or a group of candidates are interviewed together. Group interviews are conducted to save time when large number of applications received for limited job vacancies. In this case, a subject will be given to the candidates to get engaged in group discussions and the interviewer judges the innovativeness and behavior of each candidate within the group.
4. Depth Interviews - Depth interview is a semi-structured interview, where the candidates have to give detailed information about there educational qualifications, work experience, special interests, skills, aptitude and so forth. In this case, all the information about the candidate is known first and then the interviewer takes a depth interview and begins analyzing the expertise and proficiency of the candidate. This interview enables the interviewer to acquire detailed information so that the selection process becomes more manageable.
5. Stress Interviews - Stress interviews are conducted to ascertain how a candidate would reacts during the time of stress and cope with problems. In this type of interview, the interviewer will realize whether the candidate can deal in an effective manner with the demands and needs of a complicated job. The candidate who maintains his self-control during a stress interview is normally the right person to handle a stressful job.
6. Individual Interview - In an individual interview, the interview takes place on a one-to-one basis. In this case, there will be a verbal and a visual interaction between two people, an interviewer and a candidate. This is a two-way communication interview, which helps in finding the right candidate for a vacant job position. In this case, an interviewer may make use of open-ended and close-ended questions.
7. Informal Interviews - Such interviews are conducted in an informal way. There are not any proper procedures of asking questions in this type of interview and it is not adequately structured. It is more like an informal conversations between the individuals and takes place in a friendly manner.
8. Formal Interview - A formal interview is organized in an informal manner, i.e., the candidate will be aware about the dates and timings of the interview well in advance and the interviewer plans and prepares the questions for the interview. This is also called a planned interview. In this case, the interviewee is supposed to provide accurate answers to all the questions asked by the interviewer.
9. Panel Interviews - Panel interview, as the name indicates, is being conducted by a group of people. In this type of interview, three to five members of the selection committee will be asking questions to the candidates on various concepts. The final decision of selection of the candidates will be taken by all the members of the panel collectively.
10. Exit Interviews - Exit interviews are conducted for those employees, who want to leave the organization. The significance of the exit interview is to ascertain the reasons behind leaving the job. There are several reasons for which the employees leave jobs, such as, transfer to another location, health problems, promotional opportunities in other organizations, the availability of rewards and incentives in other organizations, family issues and so forth.
Selecting the Candidate
By considering the right employees, organizations improve their abilities to realize strategic objectives and manage future challenges (Bolander, P & Sandberg, J 2013). Although employee selection is considered key for organizations, existing research has usually paid little attention to how selection decision making takes place in a real-life situation (Collinson et al 1990).Two main approaches dominate research on employee selection: the psychometric and the social process approach. The psychometric approach assumes that every job consists of numerous discrete tasks, that individual possess stable attributes and the job and person can be measured independently. It aims to develop and test selection tools that enable selectors to identify, step by step, the candidate whose attributes objectively best match the job and the organizational requirements (Bolander, P & Sandberg, J 2013).
Selecting Candidates at a Leading Consumer Durable Industry
When the opportunity arises for a new position, the company is giving priority to it’s internal employees who are interest to apply first. And if the company is unable to find the suitable employee from the internal sources, then the company will post the job opportunity to external sources such as web sites, newspapers, social media and other reliable communication sources. Once the screening and interviewing were done, then comes the selection of the candidate and appointing him to the relevant post. Mostly this was done by a panel of interviewers and suitable candidate is selected upon their pointing which marked at interview.
In Singer for a junior manager position the candidate has to face three interviews. Mainly the first interview was carried out by the HR manager and the Immediate supervisor of the position. And the second interview is with HR Manager & Department Head. And the final and the most important interview is with the company’s CEO, HR Director and Director who heads the division along with the Department Head. Once the interview is finalized successfully, the selected candidate will be appointed to the vacant position. However for field managers like district managers & territory managers, they have to undergo two additional tasks than others. They are, an aptitude test after the first interview and secondly a field visit and a comprehensive report writing about the field visit. Successful candidates from above two tasks are asked for the second interview and the procedure follows the same after that.
References
Bolander, P & Sandberg, J 2013, How employee selection decisions are made in practice, Organization Studies, Sage publications.
Collinson, D, Knights, D & Collinson, M 1990, Managing to discreminate, London Routledge.
Kapoor, R 2018, Journal Article on Recruitment and Selection, University of Delhi.
Richardson, M 2017, Recruitment strategies, Managing/Effecting the recruitment process.
Interview is one of the methods being used by an organization to appraise and evaluate the suitability of an applicant for the job (Cable and Judge, 1997). It could be in many forms but most organizations use the formal structured interviews to recruit and select their employees (Cassell et al., 2002). The determination in most of the industry and sectors of the economy expressed that the best person should be appointed to fill the post in order to deliver in line with the mission and vision of the organization (Donnellan, 2010).
ReplyDeleteInterviews can be either formal or informal, structured or unstructured. Interviews can be performed on a one-to-one basis or in groups, they can be conducted over telephone or through video conferencing (Richardson, M 2017). The main purpose of the interviews is to acquire information about qualities, attitudes, prospectus and so forth. In various types of interviews, interviewers examine the behavior and communication abilities of the candidates (Kapoor, R 2018).
DeleteAccording to Snell and Bohlander,(2007 ), an Interview is a purposeful exchange of ideas, the answering of questions, and communication between two or more people. Further, it should follow some specific guidelines, rather than just a conversation between the interview panel and interviewee (Carbonell et al., 2020).
ReplyDeleteAgreed Thusitha, Kapoor (2018), says an interview is a determined exchange of notions, the answering of questions and communication between two or more persons. Normally, an interview is a process of private conversation between people, where questions are asked and answers are obtained. The main purpose of the interviews is to acquire information about qualities, attitudes, prospectus and so forth. In various types of interviews, interviewers examine the behavior and communication abilities of the candidates.
DeleteHi Kanishka, the social process approach regarding employee selection states that selection tools which are not having a high level of validity and reliability can be judged well as their usability in building an agreement between the candidate and the organization (Lockyer & Scholarios, 2004).
ReplyDeleteYes Eranga, although organizations use social processes to assist in staffing decisions, such use is not well understood by researchers or human resource professionals. Proponents of such assessment practices appear to view the wealth of information available on SM websites in a manner that is akin to a modern gold rush, seeking to reap benefits from the “alluring” amount of available data. They seem to view social media data as holding the potential to offer insights into the knowledge, skills, and abilities of potential and current employees (Roth et al, 2013).
DeleteAdding to your post that there are several weaknesses of the traditional interview. Some of these deficiencies include: primacy effect, fundamental attribution error effect, stereotyping effect and temporal extension effect (Taylor, 2008: 268). Barcley (1996) stated that limitations of the traditional interview and the continued propensity of employers and HR practitioners to the technique, structuring the process has been suggested as a means of improving the method
ReplyDeleteand increasing its validity in interview.
Agreed Isuru, time consuming is a major drawback of traditional interviews. Alternative interviewing techniques could potentially excite interview candidates and leave lasting impacts on candidates when reviewing small market programs(Gilbert et al, 2019).
DeleteAnother method that could be used to interview a candidate is though a video call. This could be used as an initial screening method to gauge the candidate’s personality and attitude before finally meeting the candidate face to face. Added advantage is, through recording the interview, it could be shared with others who are involved in the process to make a collective decision on the selection (Adams, 2018).
ReplyDeleteYes Sonali, for the current pandemic situation video call interviewing will be a good method to follow as you said. As per Richardson, M (2017), Interviews can be either formal or informal, structured or unstructured. Interviews can be performed on a one-to-one basis or in groups, they can be conducted over telephone or through video conferencing.
DeleteIt is further to mention that, according to Truesdell and Kelly (2017) discussed attracting candidates to the selection process, technology is playing an increasingly important role in recruiting. Electronic technology has also been used to reduce the number of potential candidates. In particular, using online recruiting can mean that employers receive a large number of applications from inappropriate candidates, so using technology to help manage the application form can also be helpful
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is important to ask what works for the organization. Best practices may not be the best fit for the organization. With candidate screening and selection processes, it is thus important to devise a structured method that is a balance of human values and AI qualities, that drives the employer brand forward and helps the company start a dialog with top talent (Gosh, P 2019).
DeleteIndividual interviews associated to a person specification, which required the knowledge and skills, and specifies the experience that will be most need. If only one interviewer is used, there is more scope for a superficial decision, and this is one reason for using a second interviewer or a panel (Armstrong, 2014). Most of organizations use individual interview as a selection method. And are categorized in three segments Structured, unstructured and semi-structured. (Dharmasiri, 2017)
ReplyDeleteYes Supun, I agree with you. Kapoor (2018), says an interview is a determined exchange of notions, the answering of questions and communication between two or more persons. Normally, an interview is a process of private conversation between people, where questions are asked and answers are obtained. The main purpose of the interviews is to acquire information about qualities, attitudes, prospectus and so forth. In various types of interviews, interviewers examine the behavior and communication abilities of the candidates.
DeleteSelecting the right candidate could be done using written tests, interviews, background tests, medical tests, and application evaluation. Mostly, the first selection tool used by most of the organizations are the application evaluations (Chandrashekar & Sahin, 2014). However, this will ignore the personality traits and the interpersonal skills, rather look into more of paper qualifications and experience of the candidates and hence, the most suitable employee will not be captured. In identifying the personality, language skills and attitudes, interviews could be arranged and in identifying the conceptual skills, knowledge, and expertise various tests could be conducted (Mami & Bellahsene, 2012).
ReplyDeleteAgreed Thilini. A person who is smart & who gets “result” may be a person who discriminates, bullies, or causes turnover in the organization. Practitioners are mindful of these issues because as HR Professionals they see the fallout daily from poor fit or bad management practices and know that intelligence, personality, and goal setting are important but are not enough ( Cohen, 2007).
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ReplyDeleteBased on your post, employees are considered the most significant resources within the hospitality organization (Kandasamy and Ancheri, 2009). Therefore, employee selection is critical to ensure that the organization is staffed with the right people, that is, people with the right attitude , knowledge, skills, and abilities Given the high rate of turnover, shortage of front line and managerial employees, and rigorous selection practices used by organizations to hire the right employee, hospitality companies spend a fortune in recruitment and selection practices (Stone al.,2012)
ReplyDeleteIn any company recruiting the best employees is one of the most important, time taking and challenging activities of the company. Manual existing methods for job recruitment are costly in terms of time, money, usage of resources, written tests and so on. To overcome many of the existing problems present in the existing recruitment systems there is a need to design and develop a new automated system for efficient job recruitment (Reddy, V & Prema, K 2018).
DeleteRecruitment and selection are a key component of the core activities underlying human resource management. By using the right selection methods, the candidate can ensure not only the right skills for the job, but also the right personality to fit the existing organization culture. Once that "right" person is recruited, the organization must ensure that it provides the right motivations (Adu-Darkoh,M.2014).
ReplyDeleteAccording Gupta & Joshi (2008), the main object of interview is to find out of whether an individual candidate is suitable for a particular job or not. Face to face interview is the most important step of the selection procedure. It helps in judging the personality, ability, capability and the temperament of the candidates. It also provides an opportunity to check the information given by the candidates in their application forms. It provides the opportunity to the enterprise to understand the candidates thoroughly. It also provides the opportunity to the candidates to understand the organization and the job. In this way, it is a process of two way communication.
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