Job interview

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There is extant data which puts into question the value of job interviews as a tool for selecting employees. Where the aim of a job interview is ostensibly to choose a candidate who will perform well in the job role, other methods of selection provide greater predictive power and often lower costs.^[135]

Interview structure issues[edit]

An interview at a job fair

As discussed previously, interviews with more structure are considered best practice, as they tend to result in much better decisions about who will be a good performing employee than interviews with less structure.^[136] Structure in an interview can be compared to the standardization of a typical paper and pencil test: It would be considered unfair if every test taker were given different questions and a different number of questions on an exam, or if their answers were each graded differently. Yet this is exactly what occurs in an unstructured interview; interviewers decide the number and content of questions, rate responses using whatever strategy they want (e.g., relying on intuition, or using overall ratings at the end of the interview rather than after each time the applicant responds), and may score some applicants more harshly than others. Thus, interviewers who do not consider at least a moderate amount of structure may make it hard for an organization's interview to effectively select candidates that best fit the work needs of the organization.

Interviewer rating reliability