Abstract
Four experiments were conducted to determine whether participants' awareness of the performance criterion on which they were being evaluated results in higher scores on a criterion valid situational interview (SI) where each question either contains or does not contain a dilemma. In the first experiment there was no significant difference between those who were or were not informed of the performance criterion that the SI questions predicted. Experiment 2 replicated this finding. In each instance the SI questions in these two experiments contained a dilemma. In a third experiment, participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (knowledge/no knowledge provided of the criterion) X 2 (SI dilemma/no dilemma) design. Knowledge of the criterion increased interview scores only when the questions did not contain a dilemma. The fourth experiment revealed that including a dilemma in a SI question attenuates the ATIC-SI relationship when participants must identify rather than be informed of the performance criterion that the SI has been developed to assess.
Highlights
The employment interview has long been known to be a deeply flawed method for selecting individuals (Wagner, 1949; Ulrich and Trumbo, 1965)
In response to Kleinmann’s (1993) and Griffin’s (2014) call for research on Ability to Identify Criteria (ATIC) under both transparent and non-transparent performance criterion conditions, the purpose of the present research was to examine the possibility that the alleged benefit of the ATIC for answering situational interview (SI) questions is based on inappropriate research methodology, namely, the failure to include a dilemma in each SI question
We tested for any effect that an individual’s sex, age, years of work experience, number of hours worked per week, and education may have had on this result
Summary
The employment interview has long been known to be a deeply flawed method for selecting individuals (Wagner, 1949; Ulrich and Trumbo, 1965). The result is a selection technique that has low reliability and validity. All job applicants are asked the same job-related questions derived from a systematic job analysis. The result is two reliable, valid methods for interviewing candidates. These two methods are the situational interview (SI; Latham, 1989) and the patterned behavior description interview (PBDI; Janz, 1989). Applicants are asked to respond to questions derived from a job analysis by explaining what they would do in sundry situations. A meta-analysis of the research on the effectiveness of these two interview techniques revealed that the SI has higher overall mean criterion-related validity (M = 0.23) compared to the PBDI (M = 0.18) for predicting an individual’s job performance
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