Effective interviewing and selection testing in human resource management

¶ … human resource management with regard to interviewing process.

As a human resource management consultant, I feel it is important that I screen job candidates carefully not only to locate the most professionally qualified, but also to locate the candidates that would work well together as part of the current company team.

In an interview situation there are three questions I never fail to ask.

How would you describe yourself?

The reason I believe that this is an important question in an interview is that it provides the opportunity for me to assess not only what the person is like by his or her description, but it also allows me to ascertain how confident the candidate is based on the ease with which the candidate relates his or her self description.

What do you think it takes to be successful in this career?

This is a very important question as it allows me to see how well matched the candidate's ideas about the career are with the reality of the career.

Selection testing is another important aspect of locating and selecting candidates to fill job openings.

The testing process helps me to see past the like or dislike of the candidate's personality and provides me with the ability to see them in scientific, proven, measurable methods.

The personality tests that are provided for many candidates to take are tests that I would willingly use.

Many people are very good at conversation and it is easy to manipulate the conversation to appear to have a certain type of characteristic. The tests that ask 200-300 questions and are repetitive throughout the test, provide such methods that the candidate's true thoughts, feelings, beliefs and moral character end up coming through.

In selecting a first level management candidate the personality test will also allow us to get an idea of how much of a team player the candidate would be as well as how easily this candidate would be manipulated by employees that he or she was charged with managing.

I don't have a lot of faith in the validity of the honesty-integrity tests because I believe people can answer in a way they know is expected, however, the controversial and questionable tests are something I would use to interview management candidates because they provide a more in-depth and open ended ability to have the candidate display his or her true feelings.