What Is a Structured Interview?

Professor Shi Kan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, defines the concept of Structured Interviewing as: according to the competence characteristics of a specific position, following a fixed procedure, using a special question bank, evaluation criteria and evaluation methods, and interviewing candidates through a panel of examiners Verbal communication and other methods to evaluate candidates for talent assessment methods that meet the requirements of recruitment positions.

Structured interview

Structured interviews can help interviewers discover specific performances related to the professional behavior of recruiting positions. In this process, interviewers can get more information about the candidate's professional background,

Structured interviews are mainly divided into behavioral descriptive interviews and situational interviews.

Behavioral descriptive interviews stem from "past behavior is the best prediction of future behavior." Setting a recruiting context means that the best way for recruiters to predict future workers is to understand how they have done in the past. Generally speaking, questions about behavior description interviews are behavioral questions based on key competencies. Therefore, a job analysis must be performed on the competencies and behavior requirements to determine the required competencies.

Situational interviews originate from goal setting theory in motivation theory. Interviewers' future behavior will be greatly influenced by their goals or behavioral intentions. The purpose of a situational interview is to set up a series of things that the interviewer may encounter in the job, and ask "what would you do in this situation" to identify job applicants' intentions related to work. The first step in conducting a situational interview is to perform job analysis, and to determine whether the interviewer is qualified for future jobs by analyzing the required characteristics of the key event. Because there must be critical events, situational interviews are not suitable for jobs that have changed a lot and jobs that used to have fewer people in the past.

What are the structured interviews?

1,

The design of a structured interview consists of four steps:

1. Post analysis

2. Determine the evaluation elements

3. Determine the test questions

4.Determine evaluation criteria and appraisers

In structured interviews, the main links can be divided into: 1.

1. Interviewers don't agree on the criteria for interviewers

During the interview process, the interviewer has a different understanding of the evaluation criteria due to his / her position, life experience, and personality, which is subjective. The fair evaluation of college graduates during the interview has become an important factor in corporate recruitment, but because the interviewer also fluctuates in understanding the evaluation criteria, they have different understandings and understandings between each question and between interviewers. The lack of stability of the scoring standards affects the reliability and fairness of the overall scoring results.

2. Unreasonable composition of interviewer

The composition of the interviewer should be composed of personnel from the human resources department and the employment department. When necessary, relevant experts and consultants are also required to participate. With the participation of personnel from various quarters, the division of labor can reflect the professionalism of the examiner. When companies interview graduates, the examiner composition is basically a member of the human resources department of the enterprise, and a considerable number of interviewers often do not grasp the professional knowledge accurately. Graduates have just stepped out of the school. When conducting interviews, they usually have relatively strong theoretical knowledge and relatively weak practical abilities. If the interviewer is only composed of human resources departments, they tend to absorb strong theoretical but poor working abilities during the interview process. People will have a negative impact on the company.

3. The interview process is stylized and lacks flexibility

When interviewers interview, because the questions are designed in advance, and the time is also limited, the conversation is more about the established questions, so the strict interview process will inevitably be more mechanical and unnatural. It is almost impossible to gain a deeper understanding of the thoughts and inner activities of graduate interviewers. Interviewers do not consider the actual situation of graduates when asking questions to graduate interviewers. The questions are simple and intuitive, and the lack of necessary design may even exceed their ability. University graduates have just stepped out of the school. They are a vibrant group of people who are full of hope for the future and have a strong sense of responsibility for their work. A sudden problem may cause a company to lose a good talent for nothing.

Structured interviews are different from traditional interviewing methods, and consist of a series of job-related questions that are continuously asked to job applicants in a position:

1. Structured interviews take longer to prepare than traditional interviews, and there are many jobs to prepare

(1) Arrangement of examination venue. This can reflect the corporate culture, reflect the management level of the organization, give the candidate a preliminary impression of the company, and also affect the acceptability of the company to the candidate.

(2) Before the interview, the materials must be fully prepared. Includes the applicant's personal information, structured questionnaire, interview score sheet, and interview procedure sheet.

(3) Reasonable determination of interview time. It is necessary to enable interviewers to fully obtain the true information of the candidate without increasing the interview cost too much. Generally speaking, each candidate will have some psychological preparation for the interview, and their psychological alert period is between 20 and 30 minutes. If this time period is exceeded, people's psychological alertness will decrease, so the interview time will be longer It is more beneficial to find problems. Each person's interview can be scheduled for more than 40 consecutive minutes. If possible, the company can arrange several rounds of interviews.

(4) Collaboration of interviewers. The personnel involved in the interview include: personnel from the human resources department, personnel from the employment department, and sometimes need to have consultants to join. The personnel of the Human Resources Department are responsible for the inspection of general matters such as work, learning experience, salary, benefits, job motivation, etc .; the personnel of the employment department are responsible for the inspection of professional business aspects such as skills, knowledge, and work experience; and the consultants inspect the special projects.

2. Acquisition and transmission of effective information during structured interviews

Interviewers moderately induce candidates to provide job-related information. When asking questions, the interviewer should adopt an open-minded attitude to the job applicant's response, send signals regularly, nod, smile, etc. to show that he is interested in the job applicant's conversation. The interviewer should also control the progress of the interview to ensure that the questions are answered within a reasonable time. When it is necessary to know the specific situation, the job applicant can be described in detail.

The interviewer should provide appropriate information about the organization and work, generally after the necessary information of the job applicant has been collected, which contains positive and negative information. The interviewer should honestly answer any questions asked by the candidate regarding organization and work, which will help the two-way selection of the selection process.

3 Evaluation and statistics of interview results

After the interview, the score can be evaluated by the final scoring method or the question-and-question method. The score can be obtained by simply adding the scores according to predetermined criteria, or reflecting the relative importance of each attribute (specific The relative importance of each attribute is specified) The scores are weighted and summed to get the score, and the authoritative procedures of the interviewer can be weighted and summed to get the score.

When evaluating job applicants according to each attribute required for the job, not only should the overall score be compared, but also whether the attribute is compensable. In other words, sometimes high scores for one type of property can compensate for low scores on another type of property; sometimes proficiency in one aspect cannot make up for the other, such as lack of the ability to live in harmony with others. Disqualify a candidate for application, regardless of the status of other abilities.

4 Necessary training for interviewers

Many researchers believe that a competent interviewer is generated through the accumulation of experience. However, among experienced interviewers, the interview results are often disputed, especially the traditional ones.

The basic principle of structured interview is: for the same kind of applicants, use the same tone and wording, follow the same order, ask the same questions, and score according to the same criteria. The structure of the problem is the quality structure of the personnel needed to recruit positions. Its design follows these steps:

1. Analyze the quality requirements of the job candidates.

The goal of personnel recruitment is to meet the needs of enterprise development in time to make up for vacancies in corporate positions. Therefore, the most direct goal is to obtain the people needed for the position. Analysis of the position is particularly important. Analyze and explain the general, physical, and psychological requirements that must be possessed by the person performing the job in accordance with the work instruction. General requirements include age, gender, education, and work experience. Physiological requirements include health, strength and stamina, and flexibility in exercise. Psychological requirements include observation ability, concentration ability, memory ability, learning ability, problem solving ability, mathematics

Structured interviews have many advantages, such as content determination, fixed format, and easy operation by the examiner during the interview; interview evaluation items, reference topics, evaluation standards, and implementation procedures are all determined through scientific analysis in advance, which can ensure a higher overall interview The validity and reliability of the interview; for the occasion where there are multiple candidates competing, this kind of interview is easier to achieve fairness and unity; the main thing is that the interview points are prominent, standardized, compact, efficient, and can achieve the goal more simply. In more important interview situations, such as recruiting civil servants, selecting managers, and leaders, structured interviews are often used.

I. Situational questions present a hypothetical work scenario to determine the job applicant's response in this situation.

Second, job knowledge questions (job knowledge questions) explore the knowledge of job seekers and work, these questions may be related to both basic education skills and complex scientific or management skills.

3. Job sample simulation questions include a scenario in which job seekers are required to actually complete a sample task. When this approach is not feasible, key job content simulations can be used. Answering these types of questions may require physical activity.

4. Worker requirement questions are designed to determine whether job seekers are willing to adapt to job requirements. For example, the interviewer may ask the job applicant if he is willing to do repetitive work or move to another city. The nature of this problem is a preview of practical work. And may help job seekers make their own choices.

As the saying goes: "Everything is set in advance and nothing is abolished". To win the structured interview, you must make adequate preparations. These preparations usually have the following aspects:

Psychological preparation

For most candidates, especially fresh graduates who lack practical experience, facing a somewhat mysterious civil servant interview, it will produce tension and anxiety. This is normal, but they must learn to adjust themselves. Candidates can adjust from both physical and psychological aspects, and strive to be able to meet the interview with sufficient energy and a good attitude.

2. Image preparation

The examiner's first impression of the candidate is the overall image. Therefore, the image preparation of the candidate is also very important. Image preparation is to dress yourself. This dress should be natural, decent, and generous, not deliberately crafted, artificial, and coordinated with your own image, temperament, and identity to give a good first impression to the examiners.

3. Knowledge and ability preparation

There is no scope for an interview, but this does not mean that the interview cannot be prepared. Targeted knowledge and ability training for the assessment elements of structured interviews is the most critical part of preparing for an interview. This kind of training can be conducted by candidates through repeated studies and exercises, or by participating in training courses in the society. When choosing a training class, candidates should take the level of trained teachers and practical experience as reference standards.

Structured interviews, as the most common examination interview for civil servant interviews, are a required course for the majority of interview exam preparations. How to grasp the essentials, use skills and get high scores in a structured interview?

Structured interview organization and implementation procedures mainly include the establishment of an examiner team; selection and arrangement of interview test rooms; the specific implementation of interviews and other three major links.

1. Select and train interviewer

Earlier we have talked about the importance of the composition of interviewing examiners to structured interviews. There are three common organizational forms of interviewing examiners: one is organized by the personnel department, and the examiner is composed of personnel and personnel from the personnel department; the other is It consists of the personnel department and the employment department, and the examiner is assigned by a certain proportion respectively; there is another organization that is organized by the employment department and the examiner is selected by the department. Regardless of the organization method adopted, the examiner is the protagonist. Examiners must be fully trained before the interview to improve their level of operation.

Regarding the selection of interviewing examiners, the examiner's requirements should be strictly selected according to the structured interviews we mentioned earlier. Those who have both moral and talents should be selected into the examiner team. If the examiner is not a person with both morals and talents, we will It is difficult to guarantee that candidates with both aptitude and talent can be obtained through interviews. At the same time, the training of examiners is also indispensable. Research and practice have proved that the trained examiner group is significantly higher than the untrained examiner group in terms of scoring reliability and scoring quality. In addition, the standardized and procedural requirements of structured interviews are very high, and they must be trained intensively before the interviews are conducted.

In the employment interview of civil servants, in order to ensure the fairness and fairness of the structured interview, according to actual needs, two supervisors (by the comrades of the discipline inspection and supervision or notarization department) can participate in the entire interview process. At the same time, according to the workload, a certain amount of test staff, such as scorekeepers, proctors, and so on.

2. Select and arrange interviews

Build a model

1) Form an evaluation team. The evaluation team should include the company's senior management personnel, human resources managers, supervisors of the department where the recruitment position is located, senior incumbents of the recruitment position, and train the evaluation team.

2) Select a certain sample from the outstanding staff in the recruitment position.

3) Perform a personality test on the test samples and summarize the quality characteristics of each tested person.

4) Synthesize the evaluation results and list the selection quality table of recruitment positions.

5) The various qualities in the post selection quality table are classified, the selection quality line is drawn, and the selection quality model is constructed.

2. Design interview outline

The design of the structured interview outline is actually the design of the questions to be asked in the structured interview process, and its main basis is the selective quality model. The main steps are as follows:

1) The selection quality model is decomposed into a set of selection qualities, and each selection quality is an evaluation index.

2) Experts are asked to design a series of questions for each evaluation index, and modify and perfect these questions to form a questionnaire.

3) Send the questionnaire to some employees in this position, and conduct a pre-test to check its effectiveness. If the test passes, the final questionnaire is formed; if it fails, the question is redesigned and this step is repeated until the test passes to form the final questionnaire.

4) Write a structured interview outline. Structured interview outline is essentially another form of structured interview questionnaire.

3. Develop scoring standards and grade scoring tables

Taking the level of the evaluation index as the abscissa, and taking the intersection of the selection quality level line and the selection quality level as the zero point, assign a corresponding score to each level of the index. The closer the score is to zero, the better the candidate and the position fit. Finally, the ranking score table of each indicator is summarized.

4. Train structured interview examiners to improve the reliability and validity of interviews

1) The interviewer is required to have relevant professional knowledge, understand the organization status and job requirements, and be clear about each evaluation index, evaluation standard, questionnaire title and related background information.

2) The examiner is required to have rich social work experience, be good at observation, be able to objectively record the various reflections of the candidate during the interview process, and grasp the characteristics of the candidate.

3) The interviewer is required to master relevant employee evaluation techniques, be proficient in using various interview techniques, be flexible, grasp the development direction of the interview, and prevent candidates from deviating from the evaluation indicators, and effectively control the interview situation.

4) The interviewer is required to have good personal character and accomplishment, be able to maintain kindness and fairness, avoid bias in evaluation, observe scoring rules, and ensure equal opportunities for candidates.

5. Interview and scoring

Based on the applicant's behavioral response to each question, the structured interview examiner scores it using the index grade score table, and the score results are summarized in the grade score table.

6. Decision

With reference to the model index score, compare the selection quality level of posts and candidates, and make a "people ----- post ----- organization" matching decision for recruitment, selection, placement and promotion.

1) Eliminate candidates who do not have key selective qualities. Some selective qualities can be improved through training, such as integrity, integrity, etc., and improved through ideological and political education; others cannot, such as strategic management capabilities. Such selective qualities that are difficult to improve are called key selective qualities.

2) Do the following for each remaining candidate's index rating score: find the sum of the squares of the scores of each index with negative scores S, and number the candidates in the order from S to big. The smaller the S, the smaller the number, indicating that the candidate and the post match better.

3) The candidates with equal S are treated as follows: first compare the number of indicators with positive scores. The more indicators with positive scores, the better the candidate is, and his number is ranked first.

4) For candidates with equal S and equal number of indicators with the same score, proceed as follows: add up the scores of the indicators with positive scores. The higher the score, the better the candidate is, and the number is ranked first.

5) According to the requirements of the number of recruiters in human resources planning, according to the principle of small number priority, select a certain number of candidates as candidates from front to back.