Common Interviewing Mistakes

The interview is a nice selection tool in the hands of the person who knows how to use this tool. If it is not used correctly or the interviewer himself is not in a positive frame of mind, mistakes can occur. The interviewer, for instance, may:

1. favour candidate who share his own attitudes;
2. find it hard to establish rapport with interviewees, because he himself does not possess well interpersonal skills;
3. not be asking correct questions and therefore not getting relevant responses;
4. Resort to snap judgements, taking a decision as to the applicant's appropriateness in the first few minutes of the interview. Too frequently interviewers form an early impression and spend the balance of the interview looking for proof to support it;
5. can have forgotten much of the interview's content within minutes after its conclusion;
6. can have awarded high scores by indicating leniency (leniency);
7. Can have been influenced by 'cultural noise'. To acquire the job, the applicants try to get past the interviewer. If they reveal incorrect things about themselves, they understand that they cannot get the job, so they attempt to give the interviewer responses that are socially acceptable, but not very revealing. These kinds of responses are known as cultural noise - responses the candidates believes are socially acceptable instead of facts;
8. may have permit himself to be unduly influenced by connecting a particular personality trait with a person's cultural or origin background and that type of stereotyping/generalising finally determining the scores of a candidate (stereotyping). For instance, he can feel that candidates from Bihar can discover it difficult to write, read and speak English language and therefore not select them at all!
9. may permit the ratings to be influenced by his own dislikes and likes (bias)
10. may conclude that a badly dressed applicant is not intelligent, attractive females are good for public dealings, etc. It is known as 'halo effect', where a single significant trait of an applicant affects the judgement of the rater. The halo effect is exit if an interviewer permit a candidate's accomplishments in athletics to overshadow other aspects and leads the interviewer to like the candidate because of the purpose  'athletes make good sales people';
11. have rated an candidate badly, following the interview of very unfavourable or favourable candidates (an anomaly known as candidate-order error; the order in which you interview candidate may also affect how you rate them);
12. have been affected more by unfavourable than favourable information regarding, or from, the applicant. Unfavourable information is given approximately twice the weight of favourable information. In according to Dobmeyer and Dunette, a single negative characteristic can bar particular from being accepted, where after no amount of positive features will guarantee an applicant acceptance.
13. have been under pressure to appoint candidates at short notice;
14. have been affected by the behaviour of the candidates (how he give answered, his body language), his or her dress (especially in the situation of female candidates) and other physical factors that are not job connected.