Workshop on Competency Based Interviewing: The Highest Standard in Interviewing

Program Overview:

Despite the various advancements in human psychology and assessment of talent and competence, such as psychometrics and multi-rater evaluation, interviews remain the preferred method for ‘getting to know’ a candidate.  Most interviews fail to achieve their intended level of reliability due to poor pre-interview preparation, improper questioning or the infamous reliance on first impressions and gut feelings.

This course is designed to overcome the mistakes untrained interviewers commit when meeting with job candidates. This workshop highlights why interview have high impact on hiring decisions and the steps needed to be taken to increase reliability while ensuring legally defensible levels of fairness and consistency.

For Whom:

This program is designed for line managers involved in interviewing candidates for vacancies in their respective functions. Human Resources business partners, Professionals in human resources, especially those working within the functions of recruitment, selection and workforce planning will equally benefit from this program.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the program, participants will be able to:

• explain the importance of interviewing as a method of selection;
• brainstorm common mistakes untrained interviewers commit and list ways to overcome them;
• list and explain main types of selection interviews and when and how to use each;
• design a competency-based interview guide using competencies and values and use it to collect ‘code-able’ data from interviewees;
• conduct a probing interview designed to uncover behavioral characteristics of applicants; and
• use data collected from interviews to complete a gap analysis and decide on the most suitable candidate.

Course Outline:

Day 1: The interview as a method of selection

• Prevalence of the interview as a selection method
• Reliability and validity of interviews: (i) Reliability of CVs, resumes and biodatas (ii) Why interviews remain the most reliable
• Problems with typical interviews: before, during and after: Overcoming problems with interviews
• Screening and biographical interviews
• Biographical interviews
• Stress interviews and why they are unethical

Day 2: Panel interviews Rules for conducting a panel interview

• Pre-interview steps
• Preparing a CBI guide
• Using competencies and values for building the guide
• Standardizing questions
• Organizing venue and material: The need for consistency and ethical implications

Day 3: Structure of a CBI  

• Introduction techniques
• Opening statements
• Conducting the interview/questions
• Open and closed questions
• Hypothetical questions: when and how
• Leading questions and how they should be used
• STAR funneling technique
• FACT funneling technique
• Disallowed questions

Day 4: Closing the interview

• Post interview steps
• Classifying and evaluating captured data
• Linking data with competency guide
• The legal and ethical aspects of translating

data to reports

Day 5: Producing interview reports

• Selection decision
• Using decision matrixes

(in the absence of a competency framework)

• Using gap analyses
• Compensatory and non-compensatory methods

Training Methodology

Lectures, discussions, exercises, and case studies will be used to reinforce these teaching/learning methods.