Interviewing

The most interesting part of last week's class was the discussion on interviewing.  As a 2009 graduate of Pitt's MBA program, interviewing is the most commonly used method for evaluating the skills and abilities of potential qualified job candidates.  According to the table on p.224 of Darlymple's Sales Management book, Ability tests, Job tryout, and Biographical inventory were the top 3 predictors of on the job success.  These three factors were the most valid in assessing the future success of an applicant.  

One of the reasons this piqued my interest was that if interviewing is not a successful determinant of success for an applicant, why do so many employers use this method?  Part of this could be that the other options go against the mainstream ways of assessing applicants and one, job tryouts, are time consuming.  Other than job tryouts, if ability tests and biographical inventories are better predictors, these certainly could be done in conjunction with the interviewing process.  Reviewing resumes is certainly done when checking on biographical backgrounds and administering an exam prior to an interview can also be done through online test taking tools.

Unfortunately for companies, interviewing is not a good predictor of successful job candidates, but it does provide tremendous amounts of other information.  Some of the characteristics an interviewer can discover of a potential applicant is their ability to communicate ideas effectively and clearly.  Another benefit of the interview is seeing how well an applicant performs under pressure.  In summary, despite interviewing being a poor predictor of success on the job front, doing away with the process completely would limit how a company gets to know a potential job candidate.