Questionnaires and Interview Techniques Are Crucial for More Objective Hiring Interviews

Objective interviews are essential for selecting the best candidates during the hiring process. However, actually conducting them is not so simple due to various classic pitfalls and often unconscious human subjectivity. Fortunately, well-designed questionnaires and the right interview techniques help ensure that the most objective and balanced assessment is made.

The Importance of Objective Selection Interviews

Objectivity doesn’t exist. But you can strive for it. This allows you to recruit the best and most suitable candidates for your organization and to offer candidates fair opportunities. Effective selection is a skill in itself. Ideally, you do this by evaluating candidates as objectively as possible. Objective recruitment and selection means not relying on a “click” but rather selecting candidates based on their relevant characteristics and competencies. The selection interview is a crucial moment in the recruitment process. It differs from an introductory interview in that more people from your organization are often present. This can also make it more difficult to conduct the interview as objectively as possible. Many employers and HR departments therefore wonder which selection methods can help them and which will yield the best results. We’ve listed a number of key points to consider.

Common Pitfalls in Selection Interviews

During selection interviews, there are various pitfalls that you can fall into-usually without realizing it. These include relying too heavily on a candidate’s first impression or acting on preconceptions and stereotypes. The latter can unfairly rule out much better candidates right from the start. Another major pitfall is placing too much emphasis on a single positive aspect of a candidate during the evaluation. This is also known as the “halo effect.” Based on this, you unconsciously assume that a candidate’s other qualities “must be just as good” if this one trait is so strong. Like a “halo,” this positive trait then casts its light onto the other traits, and you become blind to other aspects. The opposite effect can also occur. In that case, too much weight is placed on a single negative aspect. This is also known as the “Horn effect.” Unconsciously, biases always play a role in recruitment and selection-whether we want them to or not. This is due to our ancient instincts, which cause us to “flinch” when something deviates from what we’re used to. In this alert mode, we then assess whether someone is a “friend or foe.” The more homogeneous the group in which you grew up, the greater the chance that you’ll unconsciously slip into that alarm mode. This is due to the oldest part of our brain-the reptilian brain-which has had the longest time to evolve and is therefore the most powerful. As a result, we often make 95 percent of our decisions unconsciously using this part of our brain. So if you’re not careful, you’ll quickly end up making more primitive choices than we, as developed, civilized beings, often realize.

Questionnaires and interview techniques help

So how can we conduct a selection interview that’s as objective as possible, without falling into these sometimes ancient pitfalls? Two tools are particularly important here: well-designed questionnaires that objectively assess candidates’ characteristics and effective interview techniques to gather the right information. This allows you to evaluate different candidates using the same criteria. Which questionnaires are important for a recruitment process can vary depending on the organization and the specific position or role within your organization. Commonly used questionnaires include, for example, the Motivation Test, a Personality Test (Big50), or an Intelligence Test (also known as a cognitive ability test). Questionnaires are also valuable for conducting competency-based selection interviews, thereby providing clear insight into candidates’ competencies. A Selection Assessment is also a valuable tool. This is a testing method used in recruitment and selection procedures to evaluate applicants’ suitability for a specific position. The assessment is also used to gain insight into individual qualities and to determine, for example, education and training recommendations. Such a suitability assessment significantly increases the success rate of recruitment and selection processes.

Structured Interview Techniques

Conducting well-structured interviews with candidates is essential for carrying out better and more objective selection interviews. In this process, the interviewer carefully evaluates the criteria against which an applicant is assessed for the relevant job profile. This allows for a more accurate evaluation of qualities such as knowledge, expertise, and professional competence, as well as important soft skills. Standards and scores are then established for all questions. This prevents misunderstandings or skewed comparisons regarding who receives a positive or less positive evaluation. Candidates are thus assessed more fairly based on the same questions, criteria, and standards. This significantly reduces the likelihood that subjective judgments-such as first impressions, the halo effect, or the Horn effect-will play a decisive role in selecting the most suitable candidate. As a result, the reliability of a structured interview is much higher than that of unstructured interviews, making it a better method for predicting job performance. This is also confirmed by the study “Personnel Selection in the Netherlands,” conducted by the staffing agency Yacht in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam.

STARR Interview Technique

A good method for conducting structured interviews is the STARR method. This is a widely used tool among HR managers. It serves as a kind of interview guide aimed at assessing candidates’ experience and knowledge. The interviewer asks questions about past events in which a candidate had to apply certain skills or knowledge. The focus is on various fixed aspects of that event, summarized by the acronym STARR. It stands for: Situation, Task, Action, and Result (and possibly an additional R for Reflection): Situation: What is the situation or context? Task: What was the task the candidate undertook? Action: What actions did the candidate take? Result: What was the response to this, and was the final result satisfactory? It is important to ask follow-up questions during the interview to gain a clear picture of the situation and how a candidate responds. The starting point of the STARR method is a specific trait of an individual-for example, “leadership” if this is a key competency for the position in question. The STARR method makes these sometimes somewhat abstract traits concrete and links them to practical work situations.