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Better Interviewing

The Best Interview Types for Hiring Frontline Employees

Dawn Lambert

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What Types of Interviews to Use: Unstructured, Structured or Situational?

frontline hiringThe in-person interview is a common step in the hiring process.  In fact for many recruiting leaders, it is the only job candidate evaluation conducted for frontline employee hiring.  But how effective are interviews?  In this blog series pulled from our eBook - Using an Interview to Select Frontline Job Candidates, we discuss types of interviews, delivery methods, and effectiveness.

Types of Interviews

The interview can take multiple forms.  Before we discuss the interview's effectiveness, we should briefly understand the types of interviews being used by recruiting leaders today.  The interview is a selection process designed to predict future job performance on the basis of applicants’ oral responses to oral questions (McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt, & Maurer, 1994). 

Unstructured Interview (i.e. maybe I'll get lucky)

An unstructured interview involves a process whereby different questions may be asked of different applicants, at the interviewer's discretion (Avery, Miller, Gould, & Burch, 1987).

Job Performance Predictive Power

  • Unstructured interviews have lower predictive power than other types of interviews and other assessments
  • Reliability is also a significant concern because the interview is not standardized leading to a wide range of possible results.

Situational Interview

The interviewer describes to the candidates a job-related scenario or situation and asks the candidate what he/she would do under the given circumstances. Interview responses are then scored using a scoring guide constructed by job experts.

Job Performance Predictive Power

  • Other assessment alternatives have been proven to have higher predictive power

Structured Behavioral Interview

Interviewees are asked standardized questions regarding how they have handled past situations that were similar to circumstances they may encounter on the job (Motowildo, Carter, Dunnette, Tippins, Werner, Burnett, & Vaughn, 1992). Probing questions for additional details are also used. Responses are then scored using behaviorally anchored rating scales.

Job Performance Predictive Power

  • Schmidt & Hunter (1998) found the validity of structured interviews to be significantly better than for unstructured interviews.
  • Research Indicates that other selection procedures may have higher validities in relation to job performance (Hunter & Hunter, 1984; Motowildo et al., 1992).

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How does your interview compare to these types of interviews?  Unstructured, structured behavioral, or somewhere in the middle?

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Topics: Better Interviewing

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Written by Dawn Lambert

Dawn Lambert, Industrial Psychologist, provides expertise to help improve the interview process through aptitude tests, job tests, and pre-employment testing.

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