Using the Interview in Small Business
探讨小型企业为何普遍依赖面试作为唯一员工选拔工具，指出面试在信度和效度上的常见缺陷，并基于研究提出改进策略，对小企业主和管理者具有实用价值。
USING THE INTERVIEW IN SMALL BUSINESS The interview is one of the most commonly used employee selection methods, particularly in small businesses. Most small businesses focus on developing, producing, and marketing a product or service. Costs which are perceived to be only indirectly associated with this core mission tend to be held to a minimum. Personnel functions, therefore, are often given short shrift, and as a result, the interview is typically used as the sole employee screening and selection device in many small firms. Small business owner/managers may not be aware of alternatives to the interview. Even when they are aware of the alternatives, the costs (e.g., of assessment centers), can be too high for the average small business. In addition, the small number of employees performing any one functional role may limit the use of quantitatively based methods, such as testing and biographical information blanks. Finally, a management which is unsophisticated in personnel operations may incorrectly believe that the interview is subject to less demanding equal employment opportunity standards. Because small businesses rely so much on interviews, it is particularly important that owner/managers be aware of problems associated with interviews, and with strategies which can increase their effectiveness. RESEARCH FINDINGS Numerous studies fo the interview process have been conducted over the last seventy years. A review of this research reveals that interviews are typically flawed in many ways. Arvey and Campion, Schmitt, Mayfield, Wagner, and others have documented the inadequacies evident in employment interviews which have been held up to scientific scrutiny. The two most fundamental criticisms relate to low reliability and validity. Reliability and Validity Reliability and validity are two characteristics which any successful employment method must posses. Reliability is the extent to which an employment method can produce consistent or repeatable results from one occasion to another or between two or more interviewers. If, for example, an applicant receives a favorable evaluation on Tuesday, but would have received an unfavorable evaluation on Wednesday in response to the same interview questions, unreliability would be indicated. Similarly, if two interviewers using the same criteria evaluate the same applicant's responses quite differently, this would also indicate a lack of reliability in the interview process. Validity is the extent to which a prospective employee's rated performance on the interview is related to actual job performance. When an interview is valid, interviewer predictions of high or low job performance are subsequently followed by job performance at that level. Clearly, reliability is a necessary precursor to validity. If an interviewer cannot look at the same data on two occasions and come to the same conclusions, or if two interviewers cannot agree on the performance of an applicant, it is useless to speculate about subsequent job performance. Similarly, a reliable interview may nevertheless be inaccurate, and once procedures to establish reliability have been adopted, the content of the interview must be developed to insure that the interview is valid; i.e., predictive of on-the-job performance. Much research has been done to find out why it is often so difficult to conduct reliable and valid interviews. These findings have been summarized in figure 1 according to their likely relationship to reliability and validity. Improving the Interview The research literature also offers suggestions for improving interviews. For example, close association between the actual content of the job, as assessed by job analysis, and the interview questions appears to improve the validity of the interview. Structuring the interview also appears to improve reliability and validity. …