Introduction
Over time Interviews have grown in popularity. Interviews have found a lot of application other than in the traditional recruitment process. In the modern world interviews have a wider acceptance and application as they are deemed to generate valid and reliable information.
Initially interviews were seen as only relevant for job related purposes, but with time other relevant uses of interviews have emerged. Interviews can be conducted on a big number of audiences for research-related purposes.
Furthermore interviews can be conducted to famous people and personalities on popular media among other uses. Interview techniques have grown amidst the rising popularity of interviews. From simple one on one interview, interviews have grown in complexity to focus group interviews that involve a number of respondents responding to questions in one of a variety of topics.
Focus group interviews can also involved more than one interviewer. As such there is a panel of interviewers. Traditionally the face to face interview has grown to be accepted as the standard and official method of interviewing. Studies have been done to evaluate the most effective one on one interview structure to attain reliable and valid results.
Amidst the growing popularity of one on one interview, audio and video interviews have merged to challenge personal interviews. Audio and video interviews have emerged as a threat because they are supported by latest technological advancements.
When compared to personal interviews video and audio interviews have notable benefits. Currently a new technology, web based video applications has added more significance to audio and video interviews as it is now possible to conduct interviews in any part of the world over web based platform in real-time.
While personal interviews are very popular and have gained recognition as the official standard methods of interview, video and audio interviews are growing in significance and relevance and may soon replace the traditional one on one interview
The structure of interviews
Frey and Oishi see an interview as a pre-planned conversation where purposeful questions are asked by the interrogator, otherwise known as the interviewer, and the respondent, the interviewee responds appropriately (101). The purpose of interrogating the interviewee is to gain further insights on the topic on a particular topic.
Therefore, the questions are topic specific. The results of interviews may determine the next course of action. Interviews can lead to further investigations and research on a particular topic. This means that, while interview results shed more light on a topic, they are not necessarily conclusive.
Interviews can be of two basic structured: closed or structured interviews and open unstructured interviews. Unstructured interviews are more informal as they do not follow any standard format or questions. Interrogators are free to ask any question as they deem fit. Unstructured interview questions do not have a standard structure.
The main advantage of open ended interview is that they allow interviewers to probe deeper into the topic. Open ended interviews also give interviewers the opportunity to seek information on any issues that may arise during the interview. Structured interviews are the opposite of unstructured interviews.
The interrogator uses pre-planned questions the answers of which are already known to the interrogator. The purpose of this interview is to confirm the responses from interviewees. The main advantage of this type of interview structure is results are easily quantifiable. It also allows for comparison of responses where there are many respondents as same set of questions are used for every respondent (102).
Interview methods
There are two basic interview methods: personal one on one interview and audio or video recorded interviews. Personal one on one Are further divide into a number of subcategories.
Personal interviews
Personal interviews are also referred to as one on one interview or intensive interviews. The term intensive interview has been coined out of the fact that personal interviews can last for a number of hours, while extensively evaluating the topic at hand. This is because personal interviews are predominantly open-ended and thus follow the unstructured interview format.
Interviewers ask the respondents open ended questions. As such the respondent has the opportunity to be open with the answers. The respondent answers always determine the questions that follow. The responded thus determines the direction in which the interview takes. Furthermore, because of the openness of personal interviews, it is possible to generate unsolicited information (Weiss 100).
Structured and unstructured personal interviews
Unstructured personal interviews are carried out as the initial research step to prepare for a more detailed actual interview. The purpose of unstructured interview is to generate a general idea of how the respondent would behave and as such model the research along the respondent’s behaviour.
In this regard the interviews are designed to be informal where the conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee is completely informal. Other that revealing how people would behave during the research, unstructured personal interview are also intended to reveal how the respondents would react to issues they are being interviewed upon. The open-endedness of the interviews encourages the interviewee to generate additional information.
Structured personal interviews do follow a different format than the unstructured interviews. Structured personal interviews use standard set of questions. The questions are set in a specific order. The purpose of this is to ensure that there is very little variation in responses. Structured personal interviews are most likely to be analysed quantitatively (FAO 1).
Telephone interviews
Many people believe telephone interviews to be only suitable for radio and television call ins. Telephone interviews warrant to be used quiet oftenly in other areas especially in market research surveys.
However, they became unpopular in the late 20th century due to a telephone poll disaster that happened in the United States of America in the 1930s, and which discredited the resulted of telephone interviews.
Furthermore, telephone interviews were declared as not effective tools for generation valid results. At that time telephones had not taken root in many American homes and as such could not give a fair representation of accurate information as only the rich had access to telephones.
This limitation of telephone interviews that existed in the 1930s has been greatly overcome in modern America since a majority of homes have installed telephone sets such that there is a saturation of telephone use in the American society. A study of American directories reveals that at least 97 % of American homes have telephone sets.
This has resulted in the emergence of a new kind of universe known as the telephone universe. In America, telephone interviews are used to conduct interviews especially for people in the telephone universe, who cannot be reached, for varied reasons, for face to face interviews.
The growth of the use of telephone as a mean of interviewing means that it is easier to reach people for surveys. As such telephone interviews can be used for various purposes including radio rating, marketing research, political opinion polls among others (Payne 278).
Telephone as a tool of interview has found ready acceptance in the commercial world due to a number of factors. It is cheap, efficient and fast. Furthermore it is not as time wasting as other form of interviews.
However, in the academic field the telephone has been largely rejected as an effective interview tool (Chang and Krosnick para. 4). Academicians only use telephone interviews rarely as they do not consider them effective enough. When mentioning telephone interviews academicians tend to focus on their limitations and shortcomings.
This is despite the fact that there is emerging literature that shows that telephone interviews do produce reliable and valid results. Academicians believe that telephone interviews are only useful in deriving certain kind of data such as the family diet, the type of program the respondent is watching at the time the telephone call is made.
They argue that telephone interviews cannot be used for academic interview as they telephone calls are short and most of the time superficial. The duration of the calls thus means that the interviews may not be generate reliable data for academic use. Yet still, telephone interviews are more efficient and accurate as face to face interviews, while being more reliable than mailed questionnaires (Horton and Duncan 259).
Organisations can use telephone interviews to meet their staffing needs. This normally happens when employers have large volumes of CVs to go through. They thus make telephone calls to those employees who have less desirable qualities with the intention of weeding them out.
Such interviews are impromptu and will thus get the employees unawares. Employers also use impromptu telephone interviews to test prospective employees on the ability to think on the feet. Employer’s also use such interviews to test the employee’s organisational skills (Haeder 58).
More and more employers are increasingly finding it useful to use telephone interviews. Employers are using telephone interviews to scrutinise and validate minute details found in an applicant’s curriculum vitae. Because interviews are not scheduled, employers use telephone conversations with prospective employees to determine if they have the right traits for that particular job.
Telephone interviews are thus used to help employers determine whether prospective employees are candidates of future job interviews or whether they deserve further test to verify the validity of their job application.
Telephone interview are also beneficiaries of the latest technological advancement that enable for more reliable telephone interviews. Such internet based technologies such as VoIP, or voice over internet protocol, have enabled it possible to conduct telephone interviews not only within the United States but also from other countries (Needleman para 2, 3)
Telephone interviews are advantageous to both the interviewer and the interviewee. Interviewees benefit from telephone interviews if they are anticipating such calls from prospective employers. As such they keep document handy and cab refer to them during the interview.
The probability of having accurate data is thus enhanced. Furthermore it is always possible to reschedule a telephone interview. If an employer calls at an inopportune time, a request should be made to rearrange the interview. Most of the employer would be obliged to reschedule. The employee can also take time to analyse details of the prospective employer and prepared notes to use during the telephone interview.
While traditional phone interviews have been used as the preliminary interview that prepared the interviews for the real interviews, telephone interviews are fast becoming the real interviews. Recruiters are using telephone interviews to conduct in depth interviews and pose questions that were traditionally reserved for final interviews.
While many interviewees complain that such kind of interviews have raised the bar for getting the desirable job, employers are finding them to have multiple benefits. Telephone interviews save recruiters a lot of time that would have otherwise been used in normal face to face interviews.
Furthermore they also save on cost that would have been incurred preparing for face to face interviews with many interviewees. Furthermore the logistics of face to face telephone interviews are simple. As such it becomes easier to conduct telephone interviews (Needleman para 2).
Prospective job seekers must not only always be ready for short telephone interviews but also for long in-depth interviews. This is because employers are finding a lot of confidence and necessity to conduct in-depth telephone interviews. As explained by Robyn Cobb, a marketing job seeker, recruiters are nowadays asking for detailed information on a number of topics through telephone interviews.
As it happened to her, Robyn was asked to give minute details of her career, marketing philosophies and her detailed knowledge of the marketing industry. The whole interview lasted for about one and half hours. Furthermore recruiters must drop the notions that telephone interviews should be short lived and get prepared adequately for them.
This is because modern recruiters may expect recruitees to give details of their previous jobs, about the statistics, dates, explain certain occurrences and such other information that have been previously reserved for traditional face to face Interviews (Needleman para 4).
The questions with most recruitees are why recruiters have chosen to have telephone interviews. the answer lies in the fact that telephone interviews are increasingly attracting quality employees who not only meet basic qualification but also have they desirable professionals skills that enable them to stick to the job for longer periods.
Companies’ are increasingly using telephone interviews to scrutinize employees’ detailed qualification. So effective have telephone interviews become that employer are even getting employees with even better qualification and skills.
Furthermore, recruiters are using telephone interviews to scrutinize recruitees intentions. Telephone interviews can easily reveal the intentions of employees regarding the job they are applying for (Needleman para 7).
Due to the rising popularity of telephone interviews recruiters must thus be thoroughly prepared. Recruitees must be ready to deal with more complicated questions during telephone interviews. This can be attained through always haven personal documents at hand and also drilling themselves on telephone etiquettes. This will ensure success during such interviews.
Focus group personal interviews
Personal interviews have evolved from brief one on one interview to depth interviews over the years. Brief individual interviews are structured in such a way that the respondent is supposed to respond to a few standard set of questions. Depth interviews are unstructured and can explore the topic in width and depth. The interviewer varies the question according to the respondents’ responses.
Despite the criticism focus group interviews have found a foothold amongst mass researchers. Focus group interviews have been conducted widely in America in a variety of research. A famous researcher David Morley uses focus group interviews to study the behaviour of the American families on a number of issues.
Morley used focus group interviews to interrogate the extent to which the social cultural background affected the individual interpretation of the famous TV pram Nationwide. Morley used focus groups interviews because he argued that using individual interviews could not generate valid data as individuals could not be captured in their social contexts.
Morley groups were traditionally focus groups which were meant for educational purposes. His method was criticised as it did not capture the group in their domestic setting. However Morley defended it arguing that the most valuable aspect of this method is the social context in which the response was given (Oatey para 10)
Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes, another set of famous focus group researchers, used Morley’s method but in domestic setting to study the interpretation of a famous program Dallas. Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes studied set of three couples in the homes of the host.
The three couples new each other before hand. Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes argue that this was a much more realistic setting for such kind of a study. The interviews also included couples with different backgrounds. The result revealed passed the general accuracy, reliability and validity standards (Oatey para 12).
Audio and Video interviews
An article published in The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, shows that the video is one of the most effective management tolls in today’s organisational management. The video is increasingly becoming an effective tool in such management functions as training and orientation.
Furthermore, the latest advances in video and audio technology have made it very easy for companies to use video as employee recruitment and selection tool. There is a false notion that video interview tools are expensive and complicated to use but it is possible to set up a video conference mechanism constituting a video camera, a microphone, a basic computer and a software to edit the data, for as little as US $ 500 (Chapman and Weiss 103).
One of the basic advantages of video and audio interviews tools is that they allow for recording of interviewee actual responses including the nonverbal responses such as emotions, tone and mood which adds further dimension to meaning.
Most organisations see the use of video technology as an added cost to the organisation yet video and audio technology can be used as a method of presenting interviews stimulant to the job interviewees. Interview stimulant are used effectively pre-prepare job applicants’ for the coming interview.
This new dimension of preparing interviewees in advance has been facilitated by audio and video technologies. Stimulating job interviews through audio video is done in several ways. An interview can be recorded and played through Audio tape through either a video cassette recorder or a video camera.
A telemonitor is effectively used to project the interview questionnaires to the interviewees. A more advanced approach is to use a DVD player and project the interview to job applicants via a television set or a computer. Multimedia technologies such as Wav files can also be used (Crenshaw 24).
Despite the cost variable associated with the use of audio and video interviews, the use of these technologies is advantageous than it is disadvantageous. Use of audio video is more efficient and effective during recruitment regardless of the complications and sophistication associated with these technologies.
Audio video technologies are found to have a number of advantages. To begin with audio and video technologies reduce significantly a number of variables in the interview process such as, the time needed to prompt and prepare interviewees for an interview, the number of human resource personnel needed to man an interview process and the cost of human resource administered interview. They thus help the organisation to enhance its administration of interviews.
Other than ensuring a more efficient Administration of interviews, audio and video technologies are also used to evaluate interviewee responses. This is attained because the technologies enable the interviewers to record interviewees’ responses.
The recordings can be used to reassess interviewees responses if need be. Recording of interviewees responses cab be done through a number of audio video technologies. Simple audio tapes can be used to record responses and store them as audio cassette tapes. Improved recording can be done using video camera to record interview responses and store them as video files.
Interviewers can later use the video files for evaluating purposes. The advantage of video files over aiding file is that interviewers can use video receded interviews to evaluate interviewer’s performance during interviews and pick details that might have been missed during the actual interview.
Furthermore, video interview records can be used to evaluate respondents’ body language that might be concealed in audio recording. Body language reveals more information about a candidate and may help interviewers in employee selection.
By enabling interviewer to reassess interviewees’ performance, audio and video technologies enhance the efficiency of recruitment process (Crenshaw 24). Therefore the organization is able to pick most suitable applicants for existing vacancies.
Audio and video technologies are also useful in enhancing the efficiency if structured interviews. Fairness and standardization is maintained while using audio and video technologies. This is achieved as all respondents get the same questions throughout the interview.
It therefore means that no candidates are advantaged by receiving a different set of questions from the rest. Furthermore, video and audio interviews enhance standardization of interviews as they ensure objectivity is maintained. Human bias is absent in video and audio interviews. Since these technologies involve limited human involvement in the administration of interviews, impartiality is eliminated.
Furthermore audio and video eliminates inconsistency of nonverbal communication cues such as smiling, head nodding, inflection and tonal variations. It has been found out that any inconsistency in the said nonverbal cues may actually lead to variation in responses from interviewees (Crenshaw 35).
As a result more valid results are assured (Chapman and Webster 114). This helps in improved decision making during the interview process as errors and human prejudices are significantly reduced, when recorded interviews are reassessed (Crenshaw 25).
Despite Chapman and Webster’s assertion that audio and video helps in management decision making, debate is going on, on the actual contribution of these technologies on management decision making. There is evidence that indicates, however, that video and audio technologies do little to change the structure of the interview.
These technologies are more efficient in enhancing the reliability and validity of individual applicant’s ratings. This is attained through playing recorded interviews for assessment and evaluation. Interviewers pause the playbacks after every instance of questioning and rate the interviewees’ particular response.
This has two advantages: it reduces the mental workload of interviewers as they do not have to carry too much data in their heads for rating purposes and they can also play more than one recorded interviews simultaneously for a more detailed analysis (Crenshaw 44). Using the playback and pause mechanism, interviewers are able to analyse every detail of the interviewees’ response and make detailed summaries of each of job application candidates.
Detailed notes help interviewers to have aided memory recall of each of the candidates, thus effective decision making is achieved. Making such summaries also helps interviewers to profile candidates in terms of strengths and weaknesses, personality and other traits such as professional abilities and skills (Crenshaw 46). This helps in picking the right candidate for that particular job.
There is more to video and audio interviews than just enhancing the ratings, new technologies are making them even more efficient and reliable. Traditional video interviews are used within the same organisation, which means that interviewees must be within the physical proximity.
However, Video and audio over internet is a new technology that enables interviews to be carried out from any part of the world. This new technology is enhanced by Skype, a popular communication website. Over Skype, interviewers only need to open an account and through a webcam and conduct interviews to an interviewee in any part of the world.
As such Skype has enabled companies to limit significantly the distance between them and possible job applicants. Even though the technology is a bit sophisticated and is yet to find firm grounding, it is the face of the future.
Backed by the latest web based technologies that can support live video relay interviewers are able to conduct web based video interviews in real time. Web based interviews have also been found to constitute up to 90 % of all components found in one on one interviews (Blue paras 1, 2).
Conclusion
Despite the differences in significance and use both the personal and audio video interviews have advantages and disadvantages. Personal interviews are useful as they retain the human element in the interview process. Despite the fact that personal interviews have been criticised for lacking in objectivity, in employee selection it is useful as professional interviewers come face to face with prospective employees and are able to have an objective evaluation of how these people are.
This method of interviewing has largely been accepted Due to the fact that it retains the human element. As such it is used for various types of interviews. Other than employee selection, personal interviews can also be used for other purposes such as research and surveys.
Despite the wide acceptance of personal interviews, a new method of interviewing has emerged and is threatening to face out personal interviews. Audio and video aided interviews are becoming famous at a very fast rate. This is because of their efficiency and added features.
It has been found out that, despite eliminating human involvement in the interview process, audio and video interviews are becoming more popular. This is due to the fact that researcher have noted that they result in more valid results. Audio and video technologies are also more efficient and cost effective way of conducting mass interviews.
Objectivity and standardization of the interview process is guaranteed via audio and video interviews as there is limited human involvement. Organisations should thus embrace the use of audio and video technologies not only for interview purposes but also in other management functions.
Works Cited
Blue, Gabrielle. 4 tips for conducting a job interview using Skype. 2011. Web.
Chang, LinChiat and. Krosnick, Jon. National surveys via RDD telephone interviewing vs. the internet: Comparing sample representativeness and response quality. 2008. Web.
Chapman, D. S. and Webster, J. (2003). The use of technologies in the recruiting, screening,and selection processes for job candidates. International Journal of Selection & Assessment. 11, 113-120.
Crenshaw, Jeffrey. The use of video and audio technology in structured interviews: Effects on psychometric properties, group differences, and Candidate perceptions. Proquest Information and Learning. 2008. Print
FAO. Personal Interviews. Web.
Haeder, Adam. Conducting the network administrator job interview: IT manager guide. North Carolina: Rampant Tech Press. 2004.
Print Horton, Robert and Duncan, David. A new look at telephone interviewing methodology. The Pacific Sociological Review. 21, 3. pp. 259-273. 1978.
Print Needleman, Sarah. Job seekers, beware the telephone. Wall Street Journal 2011. Web.
Oatey, Alison. The strengths and limitations of interviews as a research technique for studying television viewers. 1999. Web.
Payne, Stanley. Some advantages of telephone surveys. The Journal of Marketing. 20, 3. pp. 278-28. 1956. Web.
Weiss, Robert. Leading edge: Video is the next wave. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 41, 101-107. 2004. Print