Human Resource Management Case Study Essay Example

on the job, he/she must first determine the employee specifications to achieve success. This is usually refers to as selection criterion and usually includes performance elements such as motivation, ability, intelligence, conscientious and so on.

Employers usually will try to identify predictors that can be measurable in the indicators of selection criteria. These predictors will include past performance, salary requirements, work references, education level, test scores and so on.The correlation between a predictor and job performance is selection validity and this is also dependent on the situation on how the selection device is being used. While reliability of a predictor is the extent to which is repeatedly producing the same results, over time. (Mathis and Jackson, 2003). Therefore the significance of employment interview is, if conducted in the correct manner, a valid and reliable predictor of the applicants’ success rates into the jobs.

Due to its importance, interviews should be conducted in a systematic manner to allow first impression, build up rapport before going into the actual details of the interview, then end the interview, rate the candidates and make a hiring decision. In this way, the interview provides more consistent findings to form the basis for any hiring decision.

TYPES OF EMPLOYMENT INTERVIEW

Generally speaking, the types of interview can be categorized into structured, unstructured and semi-structured.Since structured interviews is a critical component to ensure that there is consistency in the interview outcome, the report will spend more time in elaborating the structured interview, its question types and how to choose structured interview questions. In structured interviews, the interviewer asks a specific set of questions, and to device information based on as organized sequential flow, personal information, work

experience, motivations, expectations etc.

Structured interviews can be used for a wide range of purposes, depending on the questions used and info required.They can provide valuable insight into applicants' understanding (or misunderstanding) of the job scope, document applicant' work-related knowledge and skills either at specific points in time or longitudinally, or provide information on company or job description methods used. The specific types o structured interviews will be elaborated in section 2. 3 of this report. When choosing questions to include in the interview, it is wise to keep in mind the time frame within which you must conduct each interview.

The number of questions should probably fit in the range of 5 to fifteen.Asking open-ended questions, as opposed to questions that can be answered with a yes or no, will allow the candidates to reveal more about themselves. If a question is developed to determine if a candidate does or does not meet a specific requirement, then a close-ended question could be appropriate; for example, “Do you have a driver’s license? ” or “Do you have experience with Microsoft Word? ” Otherwise, open-ended questions usually gather more information; for example, “Describe any experience you have had in using computer-based word processing programs. Psychologists recommend using a variety of these types of questions. If an interviewer wants to ask a question to which one would expect lengthy replies, the interviewer should ask fewer questions overall to keep within a reasonable time frame. Generally, interviews will be twenty to sixty minutes long.

The interviewer should ensure that the situational questions developed do not require Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and other attributes (KSAO) that will be learned on the job. For

example, do not ask candidates how they would handle situations for which the organization has specific policies that will be taught to new hires.

Care should be taken if a question does not coach the candidate in how to respond. For example, if a interviewer tells a candidate that punctuality is required in this position and then ask if he or she is punctual, the response is going to be virtually the same from all candidates.

Further, the questions should not raise too much deference to a candidate’s self-assessment. For example, asking, “How would you describe your interpersonal skills? ” is unlikely to elicit “not so good” from the candidate. A better question in this case would be, “Describe a time when you had a conflict with a coworker, subordinate, or supervisor.How did you react to the situation and how was the situation resolved? ” Questions should be formulated at the language level of the candidate, not laced with jargon.

Also, questions should not be dependent upon skills or policy that will be learned once the person is on the job. Unstructured interview is usually unplanned and permits spontaneity for the interviewee and usually little control for the interviewer. Hence it is difficult to predict which direction that the discussion will take. Semi- structured interview is a mixture of the structured and unstructured style.

In this case, the interviewer has a certain agenda in mind and has goals and objectives to meet, but will arrange the interview in such a way as to let you do the majority of the talking while providing you with direction.

EMPLOYEMENT INTERVIEW QUESTION TYPES

Situational Questions

Situational questions present the interviewee with hypothetical situations that may

occur on the job and ask how the interviewee would respond to the situations. The use of situational questions in an interview is based on the ssumption that a person’s intentions are related to behaviour. Thus, how a candidate says he or she will handle a problem is most likely how he or she would actually behave in that situation. These questions describe a hypothetical job-related situation that focusses on a relevant circumstance at a given point in time. These questions are open-ended and require the candidates to reply with what they would do in a given situation.

The situations described in these questions are often quite similar to the scenarios used in work samples and simulations.The difference is mainly that, in the interview, the candidates will be asked to describe what they would do; whereas, in the work sample or simulation, candidates would be asked to actually perform the task. The situational question is based on the notion that what people say they would do is related to what in fact, they actually will do in the situation. Situational questions are developed from the kind of incidents that were in which there have been, or would be, clear differences between the actions of good and bad performers.Incidents questions are formulated by creating descriptions of situations which require some immediate action.

Add realistic detail to the situations. Create as many questions as will be needed to provide sufficient information to assess the qualification. The following are some examples of situational questions:

Question assessing awareness of meeting attendance protocol, which is necessary for most managerial and professional jobs: “Suppose you were going to miss an important business meeting due

to unforeseen circumstances (e. g. illness or family emergency).

What would you do? ”

Question assessing communication skills at a level needed by many jobs: “Suppose you had many important projects with rigid deadlines, but your manager kept requesting various types of paperwork, which you felt were totally unnecessary. Furthermore, this paperwork was going to cause you to miss your deadlines.

What would you do? ”

Question assessing conflict resolution skills: “Supposing 2 of your staff engaged in a heated verbal argument. How would you handle the situation? ”

Behavioural Questions

In this type of interview, candidates will be asked to come up with some very specific examples of situations or activities they have been involved in fairly recently. The interviewer will want to know in a fair amount of detail what the candidate did or said or thought in any situation that is described. Most on-campus interviews are conducted using behavioral questions, which are designed to examine how candidates have responded to specific situations in the past as an indicator of how they may respond in the future.

The following are some examples of behavioural questions:

1. “Tell me about a decision you made recently and how you reached the conclusion”;
2. “Give me an example of how you demonstrated leadership in a situation”;
3. or “What was the greatest challenge you ever faced, and how did you handle it? ”

Stress Questions

Stress interview usually put the applicants under pressure or stress test. The applicant may be asked four to five questions continuously or interviewer may act rude, sarcastic or disagree with the applicant.

Questions are usually open-ended and confrontational and sometimes the interviewers may deliberately give ambiguous instructions or remain silence to create an element

of stress.

Stress interview is usually semi-structured. The purpose for the stress interview is to assess whether the applicant can handle pressure, remain calm, keep a sense of humor, and avoid getting angry or defensive. At the same time, test applicant’s ability to restrain his/her emotions, his/her tolerance for ambiguity, and his/her energy level.

Examples and type of stress interview questions include:

• Questions designed to elevate applicant’s emotional level.

Confrontational questions

• Interview suddenly changed from one to multiple interviewers.
• Criticism of applicant past records.

“With your lack of experience, how do you…”, “You don’t seem mature enough …. ”

• Questions bombarded from several interviewers at the same time.
• Problem solving exercises designed to see applicant fail.

“That is absolutely the worst answer we’ve ever heard….”

Theoretical Questions

Theoretical questions are theory based types of questions that are used to assess whether a candidate has the practical skills and savvy to successfully do the job.Skill-testing questions can be hands-on (e. g. , programming on a computer, solving a complex math problem, etc. ) and are more common in technical, scientific, and industrial/manufacturing fields. The question often involves detailed questions about specific technologies, development theory and problem solving approach.

The examples of the theoretical questions are:

1. What is the difference between server-side and client-side scripting?
2. Provide a brief description of a diode.
3. What is the difference between HTTP and TCP/IP Protocols?
4. What is DRAM?
5. In which form does it store data?
6. Explain the theory of elasticity.

CHARATERISTICS OF EACH TYPE OF INTERVIEW

Video- conference Interview

Videophone and Video Conferencing interviews provide the transfer of audio and video between remote sites. More than half of the largest U. S. companies already utilize videoconferencing.

It is a convenient communication method and

an alternative to the more costly face-to-face meetings. Anyone, anywhere in the world can perform videoconferencing with the use of a microphone, camera and compatible software.Videoconferencing is available on the Internet. Its continual drop in cost is making it a popular resource for businesses as well as for home use.

Video conference is growing in popularity as businesses expand their applicant searches internationally. Video conference allows interviewers to observe long distance applicants while simultaneously talking with them. It results in cost savings achieved by eliminating travel and administrative costs. Video conference is used primarily as a tool for screening mid and executive level applicants.

Currently video interviewing is typically used by the following organizations:

1. Colleges and universities, to assist visiting employers with campus recruitment
2. Executive recruiters, to sort through applicants
3. Corporations, typically high tech companies and those in communications industry, for screening applicants in remote locations

Computer Interview

The computer interview involves answering a series of multiple-choice questions for a potential job interview or simply for the submission of a resume. Some of these interviews are done through the telephone or by accessing a web site.One type is done with pushing the appropriate buttons on the telephone for the answer you are submitting. Wal-Mart uses this method for screening cashiers, stockers, and customer service representatives. Another type of computer interview is provided by accessing a website while using a computer keyboard and a mouse.

Lowes Home Improvement uses this type of screening. Some of the questions on both of these types of interviews are related to ethics. As an example,” If you see a fellow co-worker take a candy bar and eat it, do you a.Confront co-worker, b. Tell the

supervisor, c. Do nothing. "

Campus interview

Employers post company profiles and job description and allow students to submit their resume to sign up for on-campus interviews. These online systems operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The main purposes of on-campus interviewing are two-fold, and both the employers and the students benefit. The employers get to know the students on a personal level and are able to identify the best students to receive the invitation for an on-site interview.

The students have the opportunity to learn more about the employers through the exchange of information. From the employers' point of view, the campus interview is an opportunity to determine if you have the basic qualities sought by the company as well as deciding if you should be invited to the office for a second round visit. Employers expect to hire 17. 4 percent more new college graduates for 2006-07 than they did in 2005-06, according to respondents of the National Association of Colleges and Employers Job Outlook 2007 Survey.

This means there will be an increase in employers interviewing on campus to hire the best and the brightest college graduates. You may encounter different screening interview styles.

Phone Interview

Phone interview is interview that is held over the phone rather than face-to-face. They are used to identify and recruit candidates for employment. Who uses telephone interviews? They are especially common for sales-related jobs where verbal communication skills are essential, the reason why phone interviews are becoming popular as a method of pre-screening applicants prior to face to face interviewing.

Employers may decide to embark on this method in response to applications for a specific job as well as following

up speculative applications by potential candidates. Many employers favor this approach to streamline their recruitment process making the whole process a much leaner and less time-consuming machine. Employers benefit from the ability to interview candidates from a much wider geographical location in much greater numbers than they would at face to face interview. A pile of resumes in response to a job advertisement can very quickly be cut down to a manageable number of short-listed candidates.

Characteristics of Phone Interview

• An initial screening mechanism used by employer recruiters to "weed out" unsuitable candidates in order to establish a pool of finalists for face-to-face interviews.
• An intentional tactic to hear how a potential candidate sounds and presents themselves via the telephone if the job requires significant phone or interpersonal communication skills.
• A cost and time effective method if the potential candidate lives far away and the employer doesn't want to spend money, or have the candidate spend the money, to come on site.

Primarily, phone interviews are conducted as a means to screen out candidates. Therefore, the types of interview questions are meant to identify candidate’s experiences, behaviors, knowledge and skills which are desirable in a particular position. The interview questions could be a combination of situational, behavioral and theoretical questions.

Some of the possible questions are:

• your possible lack of appropriate education or credentials
• your possible lack of experience
• your expectations regarding the job:
• realistic versus unrealistic
• your salary or pay expectations your inconvenient geography (where you live compared to where the job is)
• Have you handled a difficult situation with a co-worker? How?
• Have you gone above and beyond the call of duty? If so, how?
• What
  

would you do if the work of a subordinate or team member was not up to expectations?

Panel Interview

When 2 or more interviewers play off each other while taking turns asking interviewee questions. The interviewers could be supervisor, direct manager and HR staff. The kinds of interview questions asked are structured behavioral and situational questions.

Panel interview are used for the following purposes:

• It is primarily to see how well the interviewee handles stress while facing a “firing squad”
• It also measure how well you interact with different people, esp., your future bosses and work peers

Group Interview Several applicants are being interviewed simultaneously. The interviews may simulate a work environment. The interviewer may split the group into teams and give each a work-related, hypothetical situation to resolve.

The interview questions can be structured and casual conversation between applicants and the others in the group.

Panel interview is able:

• To uncover leadership potential of the prospective manager.
• Assess communication skill.
• How well applicant handles stress.
• How well applicant can excel in teamwork

PROBLEMS WITH INTERVIEWS

Common problems with interviews The common problems that company encounters with interviews are as follows:

1. Snap Judgment. Under such a situation, interviewers form their impression of the candidates within the first two and four minutes of the interviews and spend the rest of the interview looking for evidences to support the formed impressions in order to make a comparison and hiring decision.
2. Negative emphasis. In this case, interviewers give double weightage to the unfavourable information provided during the interviews. Hence the candidate may be barred from benig accepted by the company due
   

to one single negative characteristic.

How to overcome the common problem with interviews As we can see from the section, these problems can lead to interviews being un-reliable and not valid. This is especially prevalent in cases whereby the hiring decision is a joint outcome made by a panel of interviewers.

In the circumstance whereby one member of the panel is more skilled and experienced at interview techniques compared to the rest of the panel members, there will be a tendency for that one member to dominate the interview session and even affect the outcome of the hiring decision. Under uch a circumstance, there will be a high intra-rater reliability and low-to-medium inter-rater reliability (Maltis and Jackson, 2003). This will do very well if it is a one-to-one interview and also if the interviewer is the main hiring decision maker. However, this will not result in the desirable outcome if there is a joint assessment and decision to be made by the panel

members.

In order to overcome the above mentioned problems, hence leading to consistency and reliable outcome, the company can carry out the following training:

Train interviewers in questioning techniques.The training should entail the correct way to ask question such as describe, who, what, when, why, tell me, which will produce informative responses.

• In general, close ended questions, obvious questions whereby the interviewer already knew the answers, questions that rarely produce true answers (such as “how did you get along with you colleagues? ” which usually produce answers “just fine”. ), illegal questions, leading questions and questions that are not related to the job.
• Plan the interview. Interviewers should review application form, resumes and any pre-employment screening information.At the same time, a review of the appropriate job description and identifying the specific questions and sychronise with other panel interviewers will be useful to ensure that the interview is carried out properly.
• Control the interview. Interviewers should preferably know what type of information should be collected during the interview, systematically collecting it and know when to stop collecting information.

CONCLUSION

In this report, we have examined the different types of employment interview in detail and their characteristics.

These methodologies are by no means useful and important for interviewers to apply during their interview to gather information that are necessary to determine the KSAOs for any job openings to be filled up. These methodologies should be used by trained interviewers in order avoid common problems found in interview, so that the end result of the interview is objective, un-biased and reliable. In summary, if interviews are conducted in a systematic and correct manner, the outcome can proved to be effective and the company

is able to hire the candidate who has the appropriate capabilities in order to help the company o achieve business objectives and hence performance.

REFERENCES

1. Robert L. Mathis, John H. Jackson, 2003. Human Resource Management, 10th Edition. Thomson South-Western.
2. Diane Arthur, 2006, Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting and Orienting New Employees, 4th Edition, Arthur Associates Management Consultants Ltd, U. S. A
3. http://humanresources. about. com/cs/selectionstaffing/a/interviews. htm
4. http://www. imdiversity. com/Villages/Careers/entry_level/bco_oncampus_interview_0307. asp
5. http://careers. tcco. com/CampusRecruits/Interviewing_Screening. htm
6. http://www. fortefoundation.org/site/PageServer? pagename=mba_articles_the_interview