67 Introduction to Employment Interviews (6.1.1)
Stéphane Brutus; Nora Baronian; and Verna Johnson
As a manager, one of the most common types of interviews you will conduct is an employment interview—an essential step in selecting the right candidate for a position. There are several types of employment interviews, each with its purpose. In many cases, a combination of interview types is used:
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Traditional
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Behavioural
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Technical
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Group
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Panel
These interviews may occur in person, over the phone, or through video-conferencing tools like Zoom. The type of interview you choose will depend on what you’re trying to learn about the candidate and which method will best help you evaluate their qualifications.
Exit Interviews
Managers may also conduct exit interviews. These are conversations between a departing employee and a manager or Human Resources (HR) representative. The goal is to understand the employee’s experience and reasons for leaving, and to gather feedback that may help improve the organization.
Interviewing, like preparing your resume (also known as a CV or curriculum vitae) has long been a standard part of employee selection. Interviews give hiring managers a chance to interact directly with candidates. However, interviews can be expensive in terms of time, especially for busy managers. Because of this, interviews are usually scheduled near the end of the hiring process, after other screening steps are complete.
One of the biggest challenges with interviews is that they can be subjective and influenced by bias. Different interviewers may come to very different conclusions about the same candidate. Two strategies are commonly used to help reduce bias and make interviews more reliable: interviewer training and structured interviews. These strategies will be discussed in the following two sections.
Attribution
This section was adapted from Chapter 20 “Employment Interview” in Human Resources Management – Canadian Edition and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
References
References are at the end of this chapter.
