Interviewers' roles, responsibilities and training

The prime reason for the differing attitudes towards lone interviewing in the public and private sectors of the economy involves the law. Public bodies have a positive duty under discrimination legislation to promote equality of opportunity. It would be difficult for them to demonstrate that their hiring practices are objective and fair if the notoriously unreliable process of selection interviewing were to rely on the judgment of a single interviewer. The next section considers the pros and cons of lone interviewing in more detail.

Our findings about the use of single and multiple interviewers are shown in table 4. Our named-practice table provides examples of specific employers’ practices.

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The pros and cons of lone interviewing

The presence of a single interviewer is often considered to be poor HR practice. However, it does have some advantages:

The disadvantages of relying on a single interviewer include:

However, a fresh difficulty arises where more than one interviewer is involved: the issue of liaising between teams of interviewers. This is considered in the next section.

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Pre-meetings of interviewers

Interviewing in pairs or larger panels can be beneficial, as we saw in the previous section. However, these advantages depend to a great extent on the ability of the interviewers to work together effectively. They must be able to agree on their joint approach to conducting the interview – for example, the questions that will be asked, who will ask them, and how note-taking will be handled.

This collaboration and coordination is best achieved through pre-meetings.

Fortunately, most interview panels do meet prior to the job interview proper. According to our research, in only 12.1% of organisations do teams of interviewers fail to meet beforehand (see table 5).

Most commonly, the interviewers who will be involved in conducting the same interview or round of interviews take part in one pre-meeting. This is the practice in six in 10 (58.9%) organisations. In a further one in four employers, two pre-meetings are usually held. Few employers’ interview teams meet up more than twice beforehand.

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The training that interviewers receive

Organisations are keen to ensure that those who are interviewing have received training in the skills and knowledge involved.

The most common type of training in this area involves an in-house course that focuses specifically on recruitment and selection. This is the approach taken by just over half (53.3%) of employers (see table 6). Such courses are normally delivered by the organisation’s HR staff.

However, many employers use additional or alternative methods of ensuring that their selection interviewers are suitably skilled and informed. Almost four in 10 (38.2%) include recruitment-related skills and knowledge as part of a broader in-house course for supervisors or managers. The same proportion restricts itself to providing in-house briefings on recruitment issues, rather than a formal training course.

Finally, one in five (21.8%) employers uses an external training provider to deliver recruitment-related training.

This is the overall pattern of current training provision. There are, however, some distinct differences in approach based on employers’ economic sector and workforce sizes (see table 6).

Organisations in state ownership are much more likely to provide in-house, recruitment-specific training than employers in the private sector. External training providers suffer as a result. Only 6% of public sector bodies use them for their interviewing skills training compared with 27.7% of service sector employers and 29% of manufacturers.

And employers with very large workforces are more than twice as likely to arrange in-house, recruitment-specific courses than small and medium-sized enterprises.

IRS’s in-depth study in 2006 of the training of line managers in recruitment skills found that HR is keen to keep line managers up to date in the whole area of recruitment.

Few HR departments have the resources, or senior management support, to re-centralise recruitment as an HR-led process. However, they are increasingly providing line managers with comprehensive training in recruitment skills and knowledge.

We found that typical recruitment skills courses are compulsory, standalone and of one or two days’ duration. They emphasise interviewing skills and equality legislation. Courses are primarily delivered by HR staff and use a mixture of presentations and interactive sessions.

Our research also showed that many HR staff would like to see the optional courses made compulsory, and refresher training introduced or increased. HR practitioners also want greater emphasis to be given to practical learning and on improving course evaluations.

This article was written by Noelle Murphy, researcher/writer, Employment Review.

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