How To Conduct a Job Interview

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Conducting a job interview is the most widely used selection tool. It has proved most reliable and the employers rely on it in preference to any other tool. It is a process designed to predict future job performance by candidate's oral responses to oral inquiries. For having a better comprehension of Job interviewing it is proper will to go through the definitions of interview and job interview.

An interview as defined is a conversation between two people (the interviewer and the interviewees) where the interviewer put questions to the interviewees to get information from him. Job Interview on the other hand is generally defined as a conversation between an employer and a job candidate, where the employer evaluates a candidate for prospective employment in the organization. The two definitions show that an interview is a general term used for all kinds of interview, it gives out the broad outlines of the term interview. Job interview on the other hand is specific to a particular area namely employment. But, this is a common misconception that job interview is a unilateral process which, is not the case. The above definition of Job interview is very similar to definition of Job Interviewing, but not that of job interview as it does not give the full picture and is incomplete.

For objectively defining job interview it is important to know about the purpose of a job interview.

Job Interview Purpose

The purpose of job interview is eliciting information. If on the one hand the interviewer wants to know about the candidate in great detail including about the intangibles like his qualities, potential, attitude and teamwork, the candidate wants to know about the financial health, working environment, plans of th...

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...viewer should avoid distraction in the interview area and during the interview. Interventions by anybody or of any kind can distract the interviewer and candidate and may affect the process, resulting in adversely affecting the chances of a good candidate or choice of a wrong candidate.

6) The interviewers shall be trained in interviewing and know how to avoid illegal questions and errors such as talking too much and making hasty judgments.

7) Interviewers must strictly follow the planning and preparation earlier made for conducting the interview. Any deviation will jeopardize successful interviewing. Repeating the questions already asked, putting questions at the same time, contradicting one another are examples of either bad planning, insufficient preparation or lack of both bringing bad name to the interviewers and lowering the prestige of the employer.

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