Despite the increasing complexities of the workplace and improvements in employee selection methods, unstructured interviews remain one of the most common forms of employee selection. This approach, however, is no longer viable or necessary.The selection and placement of employees is one of the most important parts of running a successful organisation. "Any organisation that intends to compete through people must take the utmost care with how it chooses organisational members. Employee selection decisions made over the course of an organisation's history are instrumental to its ability to survive, adapt and grow."(De Cieri, H. & Kramar R., 2003) . There are many methods used when try ...view middle of the document...
Despite all of these disadvantages, the unstructured interview is still one of the most used methods of employee selection.A semi-structured interview uses a combination of the experience of the interviewer and a set pre-planned list of questions. Advantages of the semi-structured interview include; the semi-structured interview allows the interviewer to 'explore areas of questions as they arise during the interview process.'(Wysocki A F, 2000), and the interests and concerns of the job candidate can still be discussed with freedom. The main disadvantages of using the semi-structured interview are; there is still the possibility that the interviewer will ask illegal questions, some areas of job related questions may remain unexplored and the interviewers biases might still have an influence on the selection of a candidate.A structured interview is "based on questions planned in advanced and asked of all job candidates. There may be a distinct advantage to asking each job candidate the same series of questions because this approach usually results in the interview strategy with the highest reliability and validity."(Wysocki, A. F., 2000). Another advantage is that the interviewer won't ask any illegal questions on the spur of the moment. Disadvantages of the structured interview include; the fact that structured interviews are inflexible, making it difficult to discuss any interests or concerns that the job candidate may have, structured interviews are more expensive because of the time it takes to plan for the interview, and there is 'evidence that candidates are generally less comfortable with very highly structured and panel interviews - the better predictors of job performance.' (McManus P, 2001) .Some types of questions that are used in a structured interview are:· "Situational. The candidate is asked about their behaviour in a hypothetical job-related situation. For instance, a candidate for a supervisor position might be asked how they would deal with a subordinate who was late three days in a row.· Behavioural. The candidate is asked about their behaviour in an actual past situation. For example, a candidate for a call centre position might be asked, "Tell me about a time you were speaking with an irate person, and how you turned the situation around." The logic here is that past behaviour is a good predictor of future actions.· Relational. The candidate is asked a series of job-related questions that don't involve scenarios. For example, "What courses did you like best in school?"· Stress interview. The interviewer tries to make the applicant uncomfortable by a series of questions that might be rude. The idea is to identify candidates who might be overly sensitive, or those with low or high stress tolerance. For example, an interviewer might pry intensively into why the candidate left past jobs. The stress interview is a high-risk approach for an employer. Apart from possibly antagonizing the interviewee, ...
