Interviews from Scratch: Individual Differences in Writing Interview Questions

Abstract

Against best practice recommendations, interviewers prefer unstructured interviews where they are not beholden to regimentation. In cases where interviews are less structured, the interviewer typically generates his or her own set of interview questions. Even in structured interviews though, the initial interview content must be generated by someone. Thus, it is important to understand the different factors that influence what types of questions individuals generate in interview contexts. The current research aims to understand the types of interview questions individuals generate, factors that affect the quality of those questions, how skill in generating interview questions relates to skill in evaluating existing interview questions, and how individual traits relate to skill in generating interview questions. Results show that respondents who are skilled in evaluating existing interview questions are also skilled in writing interview questions from scratch, and these skills relate to general mental ability and social intelligence. Respondents generated questions that most commonly assessed applicant history and self-perceived applicant characteristics, whereas only 30% of questions generated were situational or behavioral.

Factors leading to interview question decisions: Introducing the Model of Interviewer Question Preferences

“…Given the prevalence of unstructured interviews, people are likely exposed to many suboptimal interview questions over the course of their lives. A recent study by Wegmeyer and colleagues (2021) found that despite substantial academic research showing high levels of criterion‐related validity, past behavioral and situational questions may not be used by interviewers as frequently as other question types. In a task where people wrote interview questions to assess job applicants, most questions dealt with self‐perceived characteristics (“Are you a people person”) or applicant history (e.g., “What is your past work experience”).…”

“…These ratings reflect question preference and are labeled question preference in this study. The 24 questions were taken from existing interview research (Campion et al, 1997; Highhouse et al, 2019; Speer et al, 2020; Wegmeyer et al, 2021) and chosen to widely vary in job‐relevance for the CSR position. Questions were a mix of past behavioral (“Give me an example of a time when you had to persuade someone to do something they initially didn't want to do.”), situational (“If a customer was not satisfied with the solution you provided for their complaint, how would you address this?”), self‐perceived characteristics (“Do you consider yourself a leader, and why?”), traditional (“Why do you want to work here?”), and oddball/brain‐teaser (“How would you measure exactly 4 gallons of water using only a 3‐gallon and a 5‐gallon jug?”), using labels from Speer et al (2020) and Wegmeyer et al (2021).…”

“…A vector of the average expert job relevance ratings (k = 24 rows, or one average score per interview question) was correlated with each participant's question preference ratings to produce a profile correlation reflecting the degree to which participants were more likely to ask job-relevant questions, labeled interview design quality scores. Similar approaches have been used in past studies (e.g., Speer et al, 2020;Wegmeyer et al, 2021).…”

“…These ratings reflect question preference and are labeled question preference in this study. The 24 questions were taken from existing interview research (Campion et al, 1997;Highhouse et al, 2019;Speer et al, 2020;Wegmeyer et al, 2021) and chosen to widely vary in job-relevance for the CSR position. Questions were a mix of past behavioral ("Give me an example of a time when you had to persuade someone to do something they initially didn't want to do.…”

“…"), and oddball/brain-teaser ("How would you measure exactly 4 gallons of water using only a 3-gallon and a 5-gallon jug? "), using labels from Speer et al (2020) and Wegmeyer et al (2021).…”