Types of Job Interviews

 

Informal Interview: This is may take place anywhere. The employer or a manager in the personnal department, may ask a few questions, like name, place of birth, previous experience, etc. It is not planned and is used widely when the labour market is tight and you need workers very badly. A friend or a relative of the employer may take a candidate to the house of the employer or manager where this type of interview may be conducted.

Formal Interview: This held in a more formal atmosphere in the employment office by the employment officer with the help of well-structured questions. The time and place of the interview are stipulated by the employment office.

 

Planned Interview: This is a formal interview carefully planned. The interviewer has a plan of action worked out in relation to time to be devoted to each candidate, type of information to be sought, information to be given, the modality of interview and so on. He may use the plan with some amount of flexibility.

Patterned Interview: This is also a planned interview but planned to a higher degree of accuracy, precision and exactitude. A list of questions and areas are carefully prepared. The interviewer goes down the list of questions, asking them one after another.

Non-directive Interview: This is designed to let the interviewee speak his mind freely. The interviewer is a careful and patient listener, prodding whenever the candidate is silent. The idea is to give the candidate complete freedom to ‘sell’ himself without encumbrances of the interviewer’s questions.

Depth Interview: This is designed to intensively examine the candidate’s background and thinking and to go into considerable detail on a particular subject to special interest to the candidate. The theory behind it is that if the candidate is found good in his area of special interest, the chances are high that if given a job he would take serious interest in it.

Stress Interview: This is designed to test the candidate and his conduct and behavior by putting him under conditions of stress and strain. This is very useful to test the behavior of individuals under disagreeable and trying situations.

Group Interview: This is designed to see how the candidates react to and against each other. All the candidates may be brought together in the office and they may be interviewed. The candidates may, alternatively, be given a topic for discussion and be observed as to who will lead the discussion, how they will participate in the discussion, how each will make his presentation and how they will react to each other’s views and presentation.

Panel Interview: This is done by members of the interview board or a selection committee. This is done usually for supervisory and managerial positions. It pools the collective judgement and wisdom of members of the panel. The candidate may be asked to meet the panel individually for a fairly lengthy interview.

Panel interview is also known as group interview. The number of interviewers in panel interview can range from 2 to 8. In a panel interview the candidate meets with several individuals at one time, typically sitting around a conference table.

Organizations use this method of interview because it is considered as more reliable method to reduce redundancy.

 

 

Exit Interview:

Exit interview is conducted for those who leave or quit the organization. The main purpose of conducting this interview is to know the feelings of the outgoing employees towards organization, fellow workers, policy and rules of the organization and also to know the reason for quitting the job so that any defect associated with the organization can be rectified.

Type # 8. Walk-in-lnterview:

Recently many companies have started to hold walk-in-interview. Here candidates are to appear for interview directly without sending their application in advance. At the time of interview candidates are asked to submit application and testimonials in support of their qualification. Questions are asked in the area of candidate’s specialization in accordance with job requirement.

Phone or Video Interviews:

Some interviews are done entirely on phone or video. These can be better than face to face interviewees for judging an applicant’s consci¬entious, intelligence and interpersonal skills. Each party looks for sub¬stantial answers rather than appearance etc. In India, the IT sector has popularized them. People residing outside India can also participate in the selection process with such interviews.

Situational Interview:

Every person, whichever position he/she holds in an organization has certain responsibilities and definitely encounters certain problems that he/she has to solve. The purpose of these situational interview questions is to judge the individual’s potential in handling a difficult situation and solving a problem.

The candidate is given a hypothetical situation related to his/ her job and asked to narrate his/her role in the situation. The answer is evaluated against the pre-established standards.

Some important situational interview questions are:

a. How would you act, if one of your team members or your subordinates does not perform according to the expectations?

b. What would be your reaction, when the recommendation or suggestion that you made at the meeting is rejected by your colleagues?

c. While working on a project, you are asked to take an important decision, what would be the steps that you would take to make your final decision?

d. What would you do, if you find that a colleague or may be one of your seniors is a difficult person?

e. Your superior has made a suggestion about something which you do not agree with. What would you do in such a situation?

f. If your colleague tells you that he/she is going on a holiday for a week by calling sick at work, what will you do about it?

g. Did you have to face a situation where you had to turn down the request of a customer for some good reason? Why did you do it and how did you handle the situation?

h. Describe a problematic situation that you had to encounter at your previous company and how you found a solution?

i. You made a mistake while doing an important project? What did you do to rectify the problem and how?

j. Describe a time in your previous job where you were overloaded with work, but could complete all the projects at the correct time. How did you handle the pressure? How did you prioritize your work?