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Structured_Interviewing_Raising
A highly structured employment interviewing technique, built on job analysis and standardized scoring, can raise the psychometric properties of the interview to the level of traditional cognitive aptitude tests.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
For decades, the employment interview has been condemned by researchers as unreliable, invalid, subjective, and legally vulnerable. This study demonstrates that structuring the interview through six concrete steps—job-analysis-based questions, identical questions for every candidate, anchored rating scales, a trained interview panel, consistent administration, and rigorous attention to fairness and documentation—transforms the interview into a psychometrically sound selection device. In a field study of 149 entry-level production hires, the structured interview achieved high interrater reliability (r = .88), strong predictive validity (corrected r = .56), demonstrated fairness for minorities and women, and produced substantial economic utility. The technique's validity rivals or exceeds paper-and-pencil cognitive aptitude tests and far exceeds the traditional interview (mean r = .14), while offering managers an involving, defensible, and credible role in hiring. This is essential reading for anyone who selects employees and wants to keep the interview they love while giving it the rigor of a test.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A hiring manager, HR professional, or I-O practitioner who wants to select the best employees using the interview—a tool they trust and want to keep using.
- The problem
- The traditional employment interview is unreliable, of low validity, and legally vulnerable, so hiring decisions based on it are poor and defensible only with difficulty. They feel torn between their belief in interviewing and the constant research warnings that interviews don't work, leaving them uncertain their hiring choices are sound or fair.
- The plan
- Develop interview questions from a rigorous job analysis of important, prerequisite requirements.
- Ask the identical set of questions of every candidate without prompting or follow-up.
- Anchor rating scales with concrete example answers for good, marginal, and poor responses.
- Assemble and train an interview panel to independently record and rate answers.
- Administer the process consistently to all candidates and average ratings equally.
- The payoff
- Hiring decisions are reliable, valid, and predictive of actual job performance. · Selection is demonstrably fair to minorities and women and legally defensible. · The organization gains substantial economic utility from better hires.
See our guide
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Additional reading
- Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Assessment and Development Centres; Best practice guidelines · British Psychological Society (BPS)
Cited by the author as an authoritative source for best practice, covering key issues like fairness, design, and evaluation that are central to the book's guidance.
- Assessment Centres (3rd edn) · C Woodruffe
Recommended for readers seeking a broader overview and history of the assessment centre method.
- The big five personality dimensions and job-performance; a meta-analysis · Barrick, M R and Mount, K M
Provides the empirical support for the book's caution against over-relying on personality tests in selection, a key topic in Chapter 5.
- A theory of the validity of predictors in selection · M Smith
Offers a theoretical framework for understanding why different selection tools have varying levels of effectiveness, underpinning the book's core argument.
- Competence at Work · Spencer, L M and Spencer, S M
A foundational text on the concept of competence, relevant to Chapter 2 on developing a competence framework.
- Development and Assessment Centres · Charles Woodruffe
Cited as a key text for readers wanting a more recent and in-depth exposition of assessment centre work, a core topic of the book.
- Performance Management: The new realities · Michael Armstrong and Angela Baron
The book uses Armstrong and Baron's definition of performance management as its foundation, making their work a primary source for understanding this core concept.
- The Competent Manager: A model for effective performance · R. F. Boyatzis
The author attributes the current usage and definition of 'competency' to Boyatzis, making this a foundational text for a central theme of the book.
- Appraisal and Feedback: Making performance review work · Clive Fletcher
Fletcher is cited as an authority on appraisals, a key one-to-one interaction within performance management, providing deeper insight into this specific practice.
- The Easy Guide to Repertory Grids · D. Jankowicz
The book presents the repertory grid as a powerful technique for developing interview models; this book is recommended as a highly accessible introduction to the method.