Do Interviews Work? If Not, What is the Alternative?

It seems like the debate will never go away — are interviews good selection tools or not? Well, here is an article author that doesn’t particularly like interviews, but at least he offers some alternatives. Another possibility is that

some interviews and some interviewers are better than others. Because of legal concerns, many large organizations have switched to structured interviews. There are several types of structured interview question formats, including situational interview questions, behavioral description interview questions, job knowledge questions, and what I have identified as the “actual situational interview question.”

One of the problems with the “traditional” interview, is that candidates often prepare canned answers to the old, standard questions.

Training managers to develop appropriate questions, and how to score them, can be very helpful. In fact, scientific research suggests that structured interviews have fairly good validity for predicting who will be successful. What may be overlooked, however, is that managers need to buy into this approach to make it work.

There is also research suggested that structured interviews have less disparate impact than certain other selection tools.

Obviously, before choosing alternatives to the interview, consider the legality of those options!