General Principles
Efficient interviewing is grounded in several important principles. The more you as an interviewer adhere to the basic principles, the more likely you will be to obtain objective on-target information in a short period of time.
Establish Rapport
A job interview is threatening to every candidate to some degree because you as interviewer have the power to accept or reject that person. Consequently, expect candidates to be at least somewhat uncomfortable and anxious. It is in the best interest of the company that you make efforts to put candidates at ease. Not only will the interview be easier to conduct, but the candidates will be more likely to present themselves well.
Each interviewer has a unique style for helping candidates relax. Some like to begin with a few casual comments. Care should be taken, however, to limit such "social conversation" to only two or three minutes, or the interview can become sidetracked. In general, give your undivided attention and listen carefully to show that you are genuinely interested in the candidate. Take measures to prevent interruptions. Your general demeanor can help. A relaxed but attentive posture and good eye contact will communicate interest and help reduce tension.
Don't Talk Too Much
The primary objective is to gather as much information as possible in a short period of time about the candidate's skills, experience, and work behavior. When you are talking you are not gathering information. If you find yourself talking more than about 20 percent of the time, this is a signal that you are not using good techniques or that the interview has drifted into a two-way conversation.
Maintain Control
At all times you should be in command of the interview-that is, you should determine what topics are covered. If you lose control, important areas of inquiry can be missed or inadequately covered and the candidate will probably direct the interview away from areas of inexperience, potential problems, or past failures. Such an interview is obviously biased and incomplete. Maintain control by keeping the interview on target. Cut off irrelevant rambling and bring the candidate back to the issue at hand.
Don't Be Interviewed
Gathering information and giving information are two different processes. While interviewing or gathering information, don't be side tracked into answering questions or giving information. This does not mean that you never answer questions; rather, maintain control and determine when to gather information and when to give information. It is highly desirable for the candidate to ask questions and receive information about the company and the position. The important point is that while giving information you have ceased interviewing.
Answering questions whenever they are asked greatly increases the probability of losing control. That is, you are taking the risk that the candidate's question will shift the interview off target or that an area of inquiry might be prematurely terminated.
Don't ignore or abruptly cut off questions, however. This only undermines rapport and denies the candidate's right to evaluate the company. Rather, acknowledge the question and request that it be held off until a later point. For example, "That's a good question, but before I answer it I want to finish discussing your experience. If I forget to bring it up again, please remind me."
Avoid Leading Questions
A leading question is one that implies the desired answer. Even the most naive candidate will realize that an affirmative reply to the question "Are you looking for responsibility?" is probably the "right" one. There is simply no way to objectively evaluate the candidate's response when the question is biased. The question "How do you feel about responsibility?" is an improvement, but once again the inter viewer has introduced the issue of responsibility. An astute candidate can use the context of the question to "figure out" the best answer. A better question would be, "What are you looking for in a job?" This gives the candidate no clue as to what you are looking for. If the candidate brings up the issue of responsibility, you can feel more confident in assuming that this is what the candidate is seeking.
Don't Jump to Conclusions
One of the most dangerous things you can do is to jump to conclusions. It is very difficult to recognize when one is actually drawing a conclusion on the basis of inadequate information. Stereotypes are one source. It is easy to assume that young people are irresponsible; that older people are rigid; that women will leave work to have children; that minorities are lazy; that Germans are meticulous; and so forth. These are all conclusions based on predetermined ideas that probably have little to do with the particular candidate being interviewed.
Jumping to conclusions is not restricted to such obvious stereo types, however. Mark Snyder, a University of Minnesota psychologist, studied 10-minute first-meeting telephone conversations between men and women. Using photographs, Snyder led the men to believe that their female conversation partners were either attractive or unattractive. Snyder found that the men formed preconceived expectations of the women on the basis of the photographs, and after the conversations gave different assessments of the women who they thought were attractive. In both cases the men stated that the "attractive" women were more sensitive, kind, interesting, strong, poised, modest, sociable, and outgoing than the "unattractive" women.
Snyder then had judges who had not seen the pictures listen to tape recordings of just the women and just the men, and then "rate" these people. The ratings indicated that the women who had been presented as attractive actually acted differently from those who had been presented as unattractive! The "attractive" women were rated as more confident and animated and were said to like the men with whom they spoke. The men also acted differently: Those who thought they had spoken to attractive women were rated as more sociable, interesting, independent, bold, outgoing, humorous, and socially adept.
What this study suggests is that stereotypes or expectations not only affect opinions and actions toward others, but the way others act as well. In short, expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies: Others become the expectation. And all of this occurs at an unconscious level. The implication for interviewing is that if you believe, for example, that a man would be more appropriate for an engineering position than a woman would be, then not only are you more likely to perceive male candidates as more qualified, but they will be more likely to present themselves better during the interview than would the female candidates! The reason for this is that through your questions and responses, you will be more likely to draw out the qualifications of the men than those of the women.
Another source of assumption is general, vague statements. What does a candidate mean who says "I want a job with potential"? For interviewers, vague statements can be like Rorschach ink-blot tests; you see and hear what you expect. Language itself can lead to erroneous assumptions. A word or phrase may not have the same meaning for you as it does for the candidate. What is meant by "It was a soft job"? It could possibly mean that the candidate worked very little, or that the job was very easy, or that the benefits were good, or that there was little stress. Making assumptions and jumping to conclusions is a subtle process difficult to counter. The first step is to challenge conclusions, and the second step is to get specific information.
Get Specific Information
Specific information about experiences, skills, and work habits is essential to selecting the candidate most suitable for the position. Each time a candidate makes a vague or confusing statement or you catch yourself drawing a conclusion, ask questions that will elicit specific information. The more specific the information you gather, the more confidence you can place in your conclusions and decisions. This brief example shows how easily an interviewer can accept vague information, jump to conclusions, and lose control of the interview by answering questions immediately.
