INTERVIEWING
Principles and Practices
Thirteenth Edition
Charles J. Stewart
Purdue University
William B. Cash
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Copyright © 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
An Introduction to Interviewing
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Chapter Summary
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An Introduction to Interviewing
The Essential Elements of Interviews
Traditional Forms of Interviewing
Nontraditional Forms of Interviewing
Summary
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Introduction
• Interviews share characteristics with intimate
interactions, social conversations, small groups,
and presentations, but are significantly different.
• Interviews share characteristics with intimate
interactions, social conversations, small groups,
and presentations, but are significantly different.
• Interviews are distinguishable from other forms
of interpersonal communication, and can be
viewed as a relational form of communication.
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The Essential Elements of Interviews
• The Five Elements of Interviews
▫ Interactional
 An interview is interactional because there is an
exchanging, or sharing, of roles, responsibilities,
feelings, beliefs, motives, and information.
 Roles may switch from moment to moment.
 It takes two to make an interview a success.
 Roles may switch from moment to moment.
 It takes two to make an interview a success.
 Disclosure is essential in interviews.
 All interviews involve risk.
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The Essential Elements of Interviews
• Process
▫ An interview is a complex, ever-changing process.
▫ No interview occurs in a vacuum.
▫ Once initiated, the interview is an ongoing
process.
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The Essential Elements of Interviews
• Parties
▫ A dyadic process involves two parties.
▫ If more than two parties are involved, a small
group interaction may be occurring, but not an
interview.
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The Essential Elements of Interviews
• Purpose
▫ All interviews have a degree of structure.
▫ An interview is a conversation and much more.
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The Essential Elements of Interviews
• Questions
▫ All interviews involve questions and answers.
▫ Questions play multiple roles in interviews.
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Traditional Forms of Interviewing
• Information-Giving Interviews
▫ Occur whenever two parties take part in orienting,
training, coaching, instructing, and briefing
sessions
▫ Primary purpose is to exchange information
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Traditional Forms of Interviewing
• Information-Gathering Interviews
▫ Occur whenever two parties take part in surveys,
exit interviews, research sessions, investigations,
diagnostic sessions, journalistic interviews, and
brief requests for information
▫ The interviewer’s primary purpose is to gather
accurate, insightful, and useful information
through the skillful use of questions, many created
and phrased carefully prior to the interview and
others created on the spot to probe carefully into
interviewee responses, attitudes, and feelings
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Traditional Forms of Interviewing
• Selection Interviews
▫ The most common form takes place between a
recruiter attempting to select the best qualified
applicant for a position in an organization and an
applicant attempting to attain this position
▫ The placement interview occurs when an
interviewer is trying to determine the ideal
placement of a staff member already a part of the
organization
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Traditional Forms of Interviewing
• Reviewing the Interviewee’s Behavior
▫ When two parties focus on the interviewee’s skills,
performance, abilities, or behavior
▫ The emphasis is on coaching a student, employee,
or team member to continue that which is good
and to set goals for future performance
▫ If the personal or organizational problem is
severe, the interview may move from an emphasis
on counseling to a reprimand, disciplinary action,
or dismissal
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Traditional Forms of Interviewing
• Reviewing the Interviewer’s Behavior
▫ The emphasis is on the interviewer’s behavior,
performance, or attitudes
▫ Common settings involve receipt of complaints
about grades, services, products, or reactions
▫ These settings are often interviewee-initiated
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Traditional Forms of Interviewing
• Persuasion
▫ Occurs whenever one party attempts to alter or
reinforce the thinking, feeling, or acting of another
party
▫ May be formal or informal
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Nontraditional Forms of Interviewing
• The Focus Group Interview
▫ Consists of a small group of people (usually 6 or 12) as
an interviewee party and a highly skilled interviewer
(moderator or facilitator) who asks a carefully
selected, small set of questions that focus on a specific
topic
▫ The emphasis is on opinions, insights, and responses
gleaned from careful listening and recording that may
generate research hypotheses, stimulate new ideas and
creativity, analyze potential problems, and generate
impressions of new products, services, advertisements,
and campaign strategies
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Nontraditional Forms of Interviewing
• The Telephone Interview
▫ Used to conduct initial employment screening
interviews, fund-raising campaigns, and opinion
polls to save time, reduce monetary expenses, and
eliminate the time necessary to send staff to
numerous locations
▫ A major problem is the lack of “presence” of
parties
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Nontraditional Forms of Interviewing
• The Videoconference Interview
▫ Interviewees should be aware of the length of their
answers to enhance turn-taking and avoid the
appearance of trying to dominate the interview
▫ Interviewees should be aware of the importance of
upper-body movement, gestures, eye contact, and
facial expressions that will attract favorable and
unfavorable attention
▫ Speak up so you can be heard easily, dress
conservatively in solid colors, look at the camera fullface, limit movements, try to forget about the camera,
expect some lag time between questions and responses
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Nontraditional Forms of Interviewing
• The E-Mail Interview
▫ Has enabled large numbers of people to make
inquiries, send and receive information, and
discuss problems at any time of the day or night
and nearly anywhere in the world
▫ One obstacle is the reluctance of parties to type
lengthy answers to questions that they can provide
easily in person or over the telephone.
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Nontraditional Forms of Interviewing
• The Virtual Interview
▫ Some organizations are conducting virtual job
fairs because they are cheaper and recruiters need
not spend time traveling to locations around the
country
▫ Some organizations are using virtual job
interviews in place of face-to-face interactions, at
least in the screening process that may involve
hundreds of interviews
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Summary
• Interviewing is an interactional communication
between two parties, at least one of whom has a
predetermined and serious purpose, that involves
the asking and answering of questions.
• There is a vast difference between skilled and
unskilled interviewers and interviewees,
• and the skilled ones know that practice makes
perfect only if you know what you are practicing.
• The first essential step in developing and improving
interviewing skills is to understand the deceptively
complex interviewing process and its many
interacting variables.