PS496 Unit 3 Interviewing Paper Example

Five Minutes at a Folding Table: A PS496 Unit 3 Interviewing Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS496: Bachelor's Capstone in Industrial Organizational Psychology

Unit 3 Interviewing Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the cannery, the applicants and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Hiring Fair

Each June, our cannery near Stockton needs about 620 seasonal workers for the pack season. Roughly 360 are returners from last year, rehired by letter. The other 260 or so are new, and most are hired over three Saturdays at a hiring fair in the plant's parking lot. Applicants fill out a one-page form, wait in line and sit for about five minutes at a folding table with whichever supervisor or lead is free. The conversation is friendly and unscripted. Interviewers mark "hire" or "no hire" and move to the next person.

Last season, 61 of 258 new seasonal hires, almost a quarter, quit or stopped showing up within their first two weeks. Line leads complained that some new hires had never worked nights, did not expect twelve-hour shifts or could not stand for that long on a sorting belt. Back in the first unit, leads had named teaching brand-new seasonal workers at the belt as one of the jobs they do most, so every early quit also cost a lead hours of training that was lost.

What the Research Says About Interviews

McDaniel et al. (1994) combined 245 validity coefficients from more than 86,000 people. Interview validity depended on content, conduct and what was being predicted. Situational interviews, which ask what an applicant would do in a job-related situation, were more valid than interviews about past jobs, which in turn were more valid than interviews built around psychological traits. Scripted, scored interviews also beat free conversation. Validity for predicting how long someone stayed was lower than for predicting performance.

That last finding matters for us, because our biggest problem is early quitting, not poor performance. An interview alone may not fix it.

Barrick et al. (2009) looked at how much an applicant's appearance, impression management and verbal and nonverbal style affect interview ratings, and whether those same behaviors predict later job performance. Self-presentation affected interview ratings substantially but was much less related to performance on the job, and unstructured interviews were especially open to its influence.

Our five-minute chat was the kind of interview most swayed by how applicants come across and least informative about how they will work.

Several leads told me they favored applicants who were talkative and confident. Those are the qualities Barrick and colleagues found most likely to inflate ratings without predicting much.

Structure Within Five Minutes

Levashina et al. (2014) treat structure as a bundle of decisions rather than one format: questions drawn from the job's analysis, identical questions for every candidate, anchored scoring for each reply and interviewers who have practiced scoring. A short interview can still be structured. The constraint at our fair is time, not format.

The New Seasonal Interview

The new interview takes about eight minutes. It has four questions, all situational, written with three line leads from the critical tasks in the job analysis. One example: "It's three in the morning, you're on the sorting belt, and the lead asks you to move to the case packer, which you've never run. What do you do?" Another: "You notice a coworker reaching into the filler to clear a jam without locking it out. What do you do?"

Interviewers mark every reply as a one, two or three, using written examples. For the lockout question, a one is "Would ignore it or help clear the jam," a two is "Would tell the lead later," and a three is "Would tell the coworker to stop and call the lead immediately."

Two questions address the schedule directly, because McDaniel and colleagues' findings suggest content aimed at performance will not predict tenure well. Applicants are asked whether they have worked nights before and how they will get to and from a twelve-hour shift ending at six in the morning. These are not scored but are discussed honestly, and applicants are told exactly what a pack week looks like.

Interviewers use a printed card with the questions and anchors. All 22 interviewers attended a one-hour session where they practiced scoring recorded answers.

Adding a Short Preview

Because early quitting is the main problem, the interview ends with a two-minute video filmed on the floor last season, showing a full night on the sorting belt, the heat near the evaporators and the break schedule. Anyone who decides the work is wrong for them is thanked and free to go.

Results

This season, 271 new seasonal workers were hired through the new interview. In the first two weeks, 38 quit or stopped showing up, 14 percent, compared with 24 percent last season. About 30 applicants withdrew after the preview. Line leads rated new hires' readiness during the first week higher than in previous years, and the lockout question identified two applicants who said they would help a coworker clear a jam without lockout; neither was hired.

The new interview took about three minutes longer per applicant, which meant opening the fair an hour earlier on each Saturday.

What Interviewers Said

After the first Saturday, several interviewers said the card felt stiff at first and then made the day easier, since nobody had to make up fresh questions for the two hundredth applicant of the day. Two leads admitted they missed being able to "get a feel" for an applicant, and we agreed they could chat for a minute after the scored questions, as long as the score was already written down.

Limits

I cannot separate the interview's effect from the preview's, and this season's tomato crop came in later than usual, which gave new hires a slower start. Applicants may also share the questions with friends who apply later. The scored answers will need to be checked against line leads' performance ratings at the end of the season to see whether they predict anything beyond early quits.

Connections to the Rest of the Capstone

The interview questions came directly from the line lead job analysis, and the improvement in early quits eases the burden on leads that the Unit 2 academy now trains them to handle. Returners, who never interview, are a separate question, examined in the engagement and turnover paper later in the capstone.

Conclusion

The old five-minute chat was the format most influenced by self-presentation and least connected to the job. McDaniel and colleagues show that situational, structured interviews predict performance best but tenure less well, Barrick and colleagues explain why confident applicants were favored, and Levashina and colleagues show that structure is possible within a short interview. Four situational questions, honest schedule talk and a short preview cut early quits from about a quarter to 14 percent.

References

Barrick, M. R., Shaffer, J. A., & DeGrassi, S. W. (2009). What you see may not be what you get: Relationships among self-presentation tactics and ratings of interview and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(6), 1394-1411. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016532

Levashina, J., Hartwell, C. J., Morgeson, F. P., & Campion, M. A. (2014). The structured employment interview: Narrative and quantitative review of the research literature. Personnel Psychology, 67(1), 241-293. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12052

McDaniel, M. A., Whetzel, D. L., Schmidt, F. L., & Maurer, S. D. (1994). The validity of employment interviews: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 599-616. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.79.4.599