Employers often hesitate to adopt the most effective interviewing strategies, which leads to less effective interviews

Job interviews are an essential part of hiring. In Canada, interviews are the most popular hiring tool. However, there is a concerning gap between the science of interviewing and the way interviews are commonly practiced in workplaces.

Employers often hold misconceptions about their ability to evaluate a job candidate accurately without the use of a structured set of interview questions and a formal scoring procedure for evaluating the candidate’s answers. We put too much stock in our ability to evaluate an applicant based on casual conversation. These misconceptions can lead employers to ignore the most effective interviewing strategies.

At the same time, researchers need to do a better job of addressing the real-world challenges of interviewing that employers face.

As researchers in human resource management and industrial-organizational psychology, we study how to optimize interviews for employers and job seekers.

In a recent study, we spoke to experienced interviewers in various fields across Canada to understand how employers plan and carry out their interviews. Our findings challenge some common assumptions about the best ways to interview.

Interviews are more than just tests

Interviews can serve multiple purposes. Employers not only use them to assess job candidates (known as selection), but also to attract candidates to accept job offers (known as recruitment) and inform candidates about the job (known as socialization).

To meet these different goals, the employers we spoke to designed their interviews differently. Some employers changed goals within a single interview, while others tried to balance multiple goals simultaneously.

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