FIRST
IMPRESSIONS
AT INTERVIEWS
The events from my own experience that has taught me about the recruitment/selection process has been mostly negative on the part of the quality of interviewers. After mentioning the negatives I will say briefly the positive experience which were of value regardless of whether I got the job or not in recruitment.
Interviews are still largely based on value judgments as the deciding factor, even though its regarded as inappropriate to select on this basis. It is a part of the human character to assess other people everyday on judgments. That is the main idea of interviews - judging.
However, the emphasis should be on value when you know you are right about a person who would be the best employee for the job. But interviewer's are told not to use value judgments this means you are not assessing that person at all and more likely to make mistakes in the selection process. Even value judgments has a positive affects and to ignore it out of the process of recruitment is when you get mediocre or wrong candidates/employees.
This means that there is a vagueness which candidates can pickup on during the interview. The candidates know the tangible standards the interviewer is expecting ie. qualifications and experience but the interview is based on intangible considerations ie. character and who knows that quality? So there is an imbalance of expectations during the recruitment/selection process.
The interviewer's training has seen no innovation for a long time and has kept to the same sort of administrative and standard procedures which means that they hesitate to pick the right candidate which would benefit a company.
Also, how are you supposed to measure someone's "intelligence" or "bright personality" etc when the human condition is that you change to adapt to the situations that occur at work.
The worst I have seen is asking for candidates to be "intuitive" and the company having seen this quality at interview stage as "ideal" but once that person becomes an employee its a skill that is seen as a threat to the company hierarchy. So personnel procedures are faulty and have more misses than hits of choosing the candidates and I expect most keep their fingers crossed behind their backs when interviewing.
Most interviews that I have attended the interviewer's look across the desk as scared to death or a concrete statue. If you have a panel interview this doubles the scenario of the "good cop/bad cop" role play. Most interviewing procedures has become so formalized that its like conducting a "court cross-examination" or auto-da-fé based techniques.
Interviews are also made on the basis of "truth or dare" situations. When the interviewer wants to find out if you as a candidate are telling the truth or daring to lie, and some would say lying shows "tenacity" in their aims to join the company especially if the candidate turns out to be an ideal employee.
And the candidate can spend his time at the company trying to maintain the standard his set himself at the interview whilst the company try to disprove his capabilities with the slightest mistake the employee might make. This means that the next person who is interviewed for that particular job is viewed from the outset with suspicion.
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