Acceso usuarios
We develop and test a model of factors that may account for how quickly interviewers make decisions about job applicants. Data were collected from 166 interviewers who interviewed applicants (N = 691) at a university career centre. Results revealed that interviewers who possessed more experience and higher interviewing efficacy tended to make quicker decisions, as did interviewers who engaged in more rapport building. In contrast, use of question consistency (a key element of structured interviews) tended to increase the time interviewers took to make their decisions. Consistent with cognitive load theory, interview decision time had a curvilinear relationship with applicant order. Specifically, decision time increased as interviewers progressed through the first few applicants, but after about four applicants, decision time reached an asymptote and then began to decrease as interviewers evaluated additional applicants. These findings have implications for the design of future interview research (e.g., accounting for intra-interviewer changes in decision-making time across applicants), as well as for the use of interviews in organizations (e.g., designing interviews and interview schedules that discourage quick decisions).
Practitioner points The belief that most interviewers make very quick decisions about job applicants may be overstated.
Interviewers with more experience and higher interviewing efficacy tend to make quicker decisions than interviewers with less experience and lower efficacy. Organizations may want to conduct refresher training for interviewers that emphasizes the value of gathering information throughout the entire interview.
The way interviews are designed can promote or inhibit quick decisions. For example, less structured interviews that encourage interviewers to build rapport with applicants at the outset of the interview appear to lead to quicker decisions. In contrast, structured interviews that require interviewers to ask every applicant the same questions appear to discourage quick decisions.
Interviewers tend to take longer to evaluate applicants near the beginning of their interview schedule and take less time to evaluate applicants near the end of their schedule. This may prevent applicants who appear later in the schedule from having a full opportunity to perform. Organizations may benefit from limiting the number of interviews an interviewer conducts in immediate succession to around four, which may decrease reliance on more automatic information processing strategies.
