The Employment Interview Handbook

Robert W. Eder, Michael M. Harris, Robert W. Eder, Michael M. Harris

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN:
  9780761906490
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781452239040
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Research from 26 new authors has been integrated into the revision of The Employment Interview Handbook, a successful volume previously published in 1989 by SAGE Publications.

This new Handbook provides a state-of-the-art review of the research in the area of the employment interview. The editors provide an integrated examination of various streams of research. Leading scholars author the individual chapters and discuss the future of their particular line of research, raising issues in need of further investigation. The book concludes with a summary of the volume implications for theory building, research methods, and effective practice.

This Handbook is particularly appropriate for faculty and students in Industrial/Organization Psychology and Human Resource Management as well as researchers and practitioners in employee selection and employment interview procedures and policies.

1

Employment Interview Research

Historical Update and Introduction

Robert W. Eder
Michael M. Harris

This introductory chapter sets the stage for the remainder of this handbook by presenting a brief historical review of the literature on the employment interview since 1915. The historical review highlights key events, findings, and shifts in research trends up through the 1990s and offers speculation about the future challenges and developments that await tomorrow’s employment interview researcher. We conclude with an introduction to the contributed chapters that make up this handbook by placing each chapter’s unique perspective within an integrated framework. This framework attempts to synthesize the diverse theoretical perspectives and complex causal relationships that exist between exogenous factors (e.g., preinterview impressions, interview context, interview content, and applicant strategies) and the endogenous factors of interpersonal dynamics and information processing as they combine to influence interviewer-applicant judgments and effective interview decision making. Before proceeding, we begin by defining what we mean by the term employment interview.

What Is the Employment Interview?

Guion (1997) recently noted, “There are many different interviewers, looking for many different things, and using many different methods” (p. 609). It is quite likely that each contributing author in this book assumes a connotation of the term employment interview that is slightly different from that assumed by his or her colleagues, in part because of the varied uses of the employment interview within work organizations’ selection processes and the multifaceted nature of interviewer and applicant decisions. Dipboye (1994) has even argued that the interview has no unique content; it is simply a method of collecting information. Nevertheless, in order for research to proceed, we believe it is time to begin to develop a classification scheme for the employment interview. First, we offer a generic definition:

The employment interview is defined as an interviewer-applicant exchange of information in which the interviewer(s) inquire(s) into the applicant’s (a) work-related knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs); (b) motivations; (c) values; and (d) reliability, with the overall staffing goals of attracting, selecting, and retaining a highly competent and productive workforce.

As this definition suggests, the employment interview need not be restricted only to face-to-face meetings between one or more organizational representatives, or their designee, and the applicant. Employment interviews may include information exchanges that are achieved largely by electronic means—via phone, on-line “chat rooms,” or even fax or e-mail technologies. However, the key word here is exchange—an expectation of give-and-take between the interviewer and the applicant. Perhaps it is the interviewer-applicant exchange that makes the interview more than just a method of obtaining information; it is the exchange itself that provides potentially unique information beyond what is ordinarily obtained from other methods. The line between an employment interview and an orally administered job knowledge test is probably crossed when the interviewer simply reads a list of prepared questions (and has no other interaction with the applicant) or the applicant responds to programmed questions given over the phone or on a computer screen. Another example would be when an applicant is requested to submit a video- or audiotape of his or her responses to interviewer questions. No doubt, these procedures can be used to assess job-relevant KSAs, but whether they should be called employment interviews, in our opinion, is more problematic.

The definition offered also gives primary meaning to the employment interview within the context of the employer’s staffing process to attract, select, and retain competent and productive employees. First and foremost, the employment interview’s raison d’être is the selection of an applicant who best “fits” the particular requirements believed to be associated with successful work performance. Complementary staffing objectives include attracting applicants who are interested in and willing to accept job offers, if selected, and providing applicants with realistic assessments of the work environment and the task demands they will face, to facilitate new employee socialization that enhances employee retention.

Beyond attraction, selection, and retention, interviewer judgment, as is true in virtually all human interaction, is subject to a variety of personal (e.g., likes the applicant on a personal level) and political (e.g., hires someone who will support the interviewer’s positions within the organization) agendas. Further, one can study the employment interview from the perspective of the applicant’s job/career search efforts, or as an important interpersonal communication event unto itself. However, the employment interview should be viewed primarily as a selection technique within a selection process designed to achieve the organization’s staffing needs. Within the selection process, the employment interview may be used early as a recruitment and initial screening device to encourage applicant attraction, provide a realistic job preview, and determine whether the applicant is minimally qualified. Or the interview may take place during the later stages of the selection process, where more lengthy, in-depth discussions with coworkers and supervisors are conducted, often to determine who among the finalists for the job will be chosen. The selection process may include multiple interviews, each conducted by one or more interviewers.

Like other selection techniques (e.g., analysis of biographical data, pencil-and-paper tests, work samples), the employment interview provides the organization with the opportunity to infer whether the applicant possesses the critical knowledge, skills, abilities, and interests to be successful in the targeted position. Unlike other selection techniques, standardization in the analysis of applicant qualifications is made more difficult by the frequently informal, extemporaneous style of most interviewers and by interviewers’ limited ability to determine the veracity of applicant self-reports of alleged competence. Clearly, the inherent information-processing limitations and non-job-relevant biases of the interviewer when engaged in information exchange with the applicant places the employment interview at a potential disadvantage compared with more standardized selection decision tools. The advent of structured interviewing in recent decades, as discussed throughout this handbook, appears to be a promising counteragent to the disadvantages and difficulties inherent in the interview. Further jeopardizing interviewer-applicant exchanges of accurate information are the dual but conflicting concerns each has over the mutual attraction and selection of one another. Both want complete and candid information, but often each is reluctant to risk candor that would diminish continuing interest by the other party.

In developing a categorization scheme, we argue that interviews can be classified on the basis of three dimensions: constructs assessed, types of questions asked, and degree of structure or standardization. Constructs assessed include applicant reliability, KSAs, values, and motivation. Reliability refers to the applicant’s likelihood of adhering to the basic rules and policies of the job and organization, such as attendance, overtime, and travel requirements. KSAs are those knowledges (e.g., tax laws), skills (e.g., running a team meeting), and abilities (e.g., verbal reasoning) that are necessary to perform assigned tasks. Values are applicant preferences for aspects of the work environment (e.g., supervisory style) and organizational culture (e.g., teamwork) or applicant attitudes about work (e.g., possessing a strong customer service orientation) that the employer believes will drive both employee and firm performance. And finally, motivation refers to the applicant’s inquiries into the different types of rewards he or she desires (e.g., salary expectations, promotion potential, opportunity to learn new skills, performance bonuses), which may have a significant impact on offer acceptance and employee retention.

Interviews can also be classified according to the types of questions asked, such as questions about training and experience, questions about willingness to work, and trait and behaviorally oriented questions. Training and experience questions include background questions designed to aid in the assessment of work experience, education, and training (see Campion, Palmer, & Campion, 1997), along with related questions intended to help in the assessment of applicant reliability (e.g., reasons for leaving last job, past attendance record). Willingness-to-work questions address the applicant’s intentions to meet work schedules (e.g., to work required overtime, to work swing or graveyard shifts, to work scheduled weekends and holidays) and to work under potentially adverse (e.g., work alone, heavy travel schedule, work outdoors) or hazardous conditions (e.g., high noise, chemical exposure). For the most part, such questions are designed to aid in the assessment of applicant reliability and motivation.

Trait questions include a broad array of interviewer inquiries into applicant self-descriptions (e.g., What is your greatest strength or weakness?) and opinions (e.g., How do you feel about team meetings?). Often these questions are intended to tap any or all of the four constructs of applicant reliability, KSAs, values, and motivation. However, the relation of such inquiries to the prediction of work performance has not often been demonstrated. Over the past two decades considerable practitioner and researcher attention has been devoted to behaviorally oriented questions as a way to increase the job relatedness of interviewer judgments of applicant suitability. Behaviorally oriented questions include both situational interview (SI) questions (see Maurer, Sue-Chan, & Latham, Chapter 9, this volume), which focus on intentions or future behavior (e.g., What would you do?), and behavior description interview (BDI) questions (see Motowidlo, Chapter 10, this volume), which focus on past behavior (e.g., What did you do?). Both formats are based on an analysis of critical events on the job that must be performed and the preidentification of the desired behaviors to be exhibited in given situations. Often researchers have described structured interviewing as the use of either SI or BDI questions. However, it is also clear that there are other ways to provide structure in the interview.

Figure 1.1. Taxonomy of Interviews

On the third dimension of the categorization scheme depicted in Figure 1.1, there are many ways to increase the structure of the interview, including asking all applicants the same questions, using rating scales or scoring guidelines, and disallowing any questions from applicants (Campion et al., 1997). Although much of the writing on structured interviewing has made the implicit assumption that a dichotomy exists—an interview is either structured or not structured—it is clear that there are degrees or levels of structure. For example, Huffcutt and Arthur (1994) describe a scheme for examining the degree of structure in the employment interview based on the degree to which scoring is employed (three levels) and the degree to which questions are standardized (four levels). Due to the small number of studies in their meta-analytic analysis, they collapsed this 12-cell matrix into four combinations. However, the direction provided by Huffcutt and Arthur is an important first step in dimensionalizing what we mean when we refer to a more structured employment interview, and in understanding the effects of different levels and types of interview structure.

Questions of “constructs assessed,” “interview content,” and “structured interviewing” are at the core of much of the current research on the employment interview, and this is reflected across the chapters in this handbook. We believe the time has come to distinguish across levels of interview structure, types of interview content, and different constructs assessed to clarify advances in employment interview knowledge. Failure to do so will likely lead to continuing confusion among researchers and a limited ability for research to affect interview practice. We need to be clear with one another about what exactly the interview is, when it is most valid, and what conditions affect its validity. By using a common classification scheme, we can more readily agree about the conclusions inferred from research and advance employment interview knowledge in a meaningful manner.

What is not in debate is the continuing widespread use and reliance on the employment interview in the making of hiring decisions; the interview is used more often than any other selection technique. Despite continuing questions over the course of the 20th century about the interview’s incremental contribution to the validity of employee selection, few individuals are hired without an interview. Perhaps because of this fundamental irony, few topics in the organizational sciences have received as much research activity as has the employment interview.

Employment Interview Research: History

In the past 50 years, 10 narrative reviews of the employment interview literature have been published (Arvey & Campion, 1982; Eder & Buckley, 1988; Hakel, 1982; Harris, 1989; Mayfield, 1964; Schmitt, 1976; Ulrich & Trumbo, 1965; Wagner, 1949; Webster, 1982; Wright, 1969).¹ Other noteworthy recent scholarly narratives of the interview literature include Robert Eder and Gerald Ferris’s edited volume The Employment Interview: Theory, Research, and Practice (1989), Robert Dipboye’s Selection Interviews: Process Perspectives (1992), and Michael Campion, David Palmer, and James Campion’s 1997 review of structure in the selection interview in Personnel Psychology. There have also been seven quantitative meta-analytic reviews of employment interview validity studies, which collectively conclude that structured interviews are superior to unstructured interviews (Conway, Jako, & Goodman, 1995; Huffcutt & Arthur, 1994; Hunter & Hunter, 1984; Marchese & Muchinsky, 1993; McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt, & Maurer, 1994; Wiesner & Cronshaw, 1988; Wright, Lichtenfels, & Pursell, 1989). Of the 17 reviews mentioned, 10 were published in just the past decade (1988-1997), reflecting both renewed interest in the employment interview as a selection technique and in the widespread application of meta-analytic techniques where an abundance of empirical studies have been conducted (see Buckley & Russell, Chapter 2, this volume). In the following historical analysis, we identify significant trends that have emerged over the past 50 years, with particular emphasis on more recent developments and future trends.

This hi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Employment Interview Research: Historical Update and Introduction
• Part I. Interview Outcomes: Validity, Fairness, and Applicant Reactions and Attraction
• Part II. Constructs Assessed
• Part III. The Interviewer’s Decision-Making Process
• Part IV. Interviewer-Applicant Dynamics
• Part V. Commentary on Theory, Research, and Practice
• Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors