Interviewing

Question 1

List and describe three of the 6 most important elements as discussed in the Campion et al (1998) reading.

Answer 1

1. Base questions on a job analysis. Basing questions on a job analysis enhances validity by increasing job relatedness and by ensuring that the interview neither includes irrelevant information nor excludes relevant information. A job analysis also reduces EEO (equal employment opportunity ) bias, and interview participants should react positively to the job-related focus.
2. Ask the same questions of each candidate. This component standardizes the samples of behavior to be judged by the interviewer, enhancing several types of reliability. It also decreases potential contamination by irrelevant questions, and it decreases deficiency by preventing omitted questions. By ensuring that all candidates are treated the same, it may reduce EEO bias (and therefore increase the legal defensibility of employment procedures).
3. Use detailed, anchored rating scales (clearly defined cut offs for scales). Anchored rating scales enhances objectivity; thus, increasing several types of reliability.
   a. Objectivity increases accuracy, so the scales may also reduce contamination and deficiency.
   b. If anchors are constructed using appropriate behaviors from a job analysis, then job relatedness increases.
   c. Objectivity also enhances EEO defensibility because it reduces potential for bias, and interviewers may appreciate the help anchors afford in making difficult judgments

Question 2

What is a structured interview? What information might we use to build one?

Answer 2

A structured interview is one that is constructed in a consistent and structured manner to increase the validity of their measure. They can be Behavioral: a structured interview in which the applicants is asked to provide past critical incidents. Or Situational: a structured interview in which the applicant is asked to describe how they would react to a specific situation.

A more valid structured interview tends to be a stronger measure of job experience, job knowledge, and social skills. It’s useful to build a structured interview with information from a job analysis.

Question 3

What are three of the major differences between unstructured and structured interviews in terms of their construct validity?

Answer 3

First, structured interviews measure job experience, job knowledge, and social skills, while unstructured interviews tend to measure cognitive ability and personality characteristics. Structured interviews are more valid because job experience and job knowledge are stronger predictors than cognitive ability, because they have more construct validity for performance since they directly relate to job aspects. Cognitive ability measures general ability to complete tasks and perform well.

Second, structured interviews focus on social skills that facilitate interaction and communication, while unstructured interviews focus on personality characteristics including those less related to job performance

Third, structure interviews have more overall construct validity. This is because cognitive ability measured in unstructured interviews has less construct validity for performance. Also, social skills seen in structured interviews have more construct validity because they measure interpersonal interactions regardless of what the person wants to do. Personality characteristics, however, measures traits like Openness and Agreeableness that have weak relation to job performance. So structured interviews focus on exactly what you need to do for the job measuring for job relevant characteristics rather than primary measures of other characteristics.

Question 4

List two construct validity differences between the unstructured and structured interviews and discuss how they might be related to the validity differences that have been observed between the two interview methods.

Answer 4

1. Personality characteristics measured in unstructured interviews include all personality traits including those weakly related to job performance such as Openness and Agreeableness. Interviewers may contaminate data including the personality traits not related to the job and that are less predictive of job performance. Cognitive ability and personality characteristics in unstructured interviews are indirect determinants and more distal predictors.
2. Structured interviews measure job knowledge more accurately as the interviewer uses a set list of questions that are relevant to the job. Job knowledge, job experience, and social skills measured by these questions have more correlation with job performance and have more construct validity. Whereas in unstructured interviews, the interviewer can ask more/less questions that pertain more or less to the job, because different questions may be asked to each candidate, thus affecting validity.

Question 5

What are the three dimensions that were shown to be related to legal defensibility in the Williamson et al (1997) study of court cases involving interviews?

Answer 5

a. Objective job-related - most strongly related
b. Standardized administration - second most strongly related
c. Multiple interviewers

Question 6

List and describe three of the more specific elements that constitute the three overall dimensions discussed in the Williamson et al (1997) study of court cases involving interview.

Answer 6

• Objective-job related
o Behavior based criteria
o Interviewer is experienced or trained
o Job description or job analysis (other elements would be difficult to obtain without a job analysis)
• Standardized administration
o Guides for conducting interviews
o Minimal interviewer discretion
o Standardized questions
• Multiple interviewers
o Faces the fact that interviews are influenced by initial behaviors and impressions
o Uses multiple interviewers each asking a single question
o An overall score is obtained aggregating across interviewers increasing reliability and reducing interviewer bias

Question 7

What is interrater reliability? How does it differ across structured and unstructured interviews. Why does this matter

Answer 7

Interrater reliability refers to the extent to which two different interviewers provide the same ratings for the same candidate. It matters because there is more confidence in a personnel selection predictor that consistently gives the same information about an applicant.

Interrater reliability differs across interviews because unstructured interviews have lower reliability than structured interviews, which contributes to their lower predictive validity.

This happens because two different interviewers for a structured interviews would obtain the same ratings and response from the candidate, while unstructured interviewers may collect different responses with differing ratings.

Question 8

Campion et al. (1998), structuring interviews

1) Name three ways reliability is determined in an interview format and discuss how improving reliability is beneficial.

Answer 8

i. Test-retest reliability – The extent to which the interviewer is consistent across time
ii. Inter-rater reliability – The extent to which there are consistent patterns between ratings of different interviewers.
iii. Candidate consistency –The extent to which the interview collects consistent responses from a candidate and across candidates

Reliability helps gather consistent and standardized information from a given candidate, candidates, and interviewers. Improving reliability helps in making comparisons.