Chapter 1. You’re Hired!

Introduction

In this activity, you will use your knowledge of qualitative research methods to establish a standardized protocol for interviews. This activity will also demonstrate some of the many ways your research skills can help you in your professional life.

Dr. Natalie J. Ciarocco, Monmouth University

Dr. David B. Strohmetz, University of West Florida

Dr. Gary W. Lewandowski, Jr., Monmouth University

Something to Think About…

Scenario: Because of your psychology background, you’ve been hired to work in the Human Resources department of a Fortune 500 marketing company. The company expects you to hit the ground running, and your first job is to create a new protocol for employment interviews. Congratulations—this is a great use of your research skills. Your employer will be so impressed that, surely, you’ll earn a raise in no time!

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Something to Think About…

Using what you have learned about interviews in your research methods course, you will develop an interview protocol to facilitate hiring for your company. To do this, you will identify the best interview questions to ask, develop an interview schedule, and determine best practices for conducting a hiring interview.

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Our Research Question

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Your first objective is to be able to collect information that will help your company decide who to hire for any advertised position. You will need to develop a method for investigating job candidates’ qualifications and experiences.

Picking the Best Research Approach

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Now that you have a research question (“How do I best assess a candidate’s professional experience and qualifications?”), you must decide which method to use to answer this question. There are two research methods that you can choose from:

• Qualitative Research

• Quantitative Research

Picking the Best Research Approach

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Now that you have settled on a qualitative method, you must determine which approach to take. There are two types of approaches that you can use in qualitative research:

• Bottom-up Approach

• Top-down Approach

Picking the Best Data Collection Technique

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Our next step is to determine which qualitative data collection technique is best suited for your research question. Here are some of the many techniques to choose from:

• Focus Group

• Content Analysis

• Narrative Analysis

• Interview

Picking the Best Interview Type

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Now that you know you will use an interview to measure candidates’ qualifications and experience, it is time to select the best type of interview to conduct given your goals. You have three interview style options to choose from:

• Structured Interview

• Unstructured Interview

• Semistructured Interview

Determining Our Questions

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You have established that you will use a semistructured interview to measure candidates’ qualifications and experience. Now you need to decide which questions to ask. Remember that with a semistructured interview you will develop specific questions, but the format will also allow time for additional unplanned questions in order to promote elaboration from the participants. First, you should determine the best number of established questions to ask.

Determining Our Questions

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To help you organize your 12 established interview questions, you should determine general question themes based on your goals and a survey of research in industrial/organizational psychology.

Determining Our Questions

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You have determined that you will ask 12 established interview questions spanning three themes: professional disposition, professional skills, and professional experience. Ideally, you will ask 4 questions per theme, starting with professional disposition.

Determining Our Questions

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Determining Our Questions

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Determining the Sequence of Questions

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You now have an idea of the types of prompts and questions you can use during the interview. Based on your knowledge of good interview practices, your research question, and a review of the literature on the topic, you establish 12 interview questions. Now it is time to determine the order in which you ask your questions.

Establishing a Protocol

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You are now ready to develop a protocol for the hiring process. Since you might not be the interviewer for every person your company hires, you must detail a specific way to conduct the interview (i.e., gather data on each participant) so the process is as standardized as possible. The first step in developing an interview protocol is to establish a purpose statement for the process.

Establishing a Protocol

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Part of ensuring that your protocol is standardized is having well-trained interviewers. The role of the interviewer is critical to the data collection process, so you must be sure to reduce any interviewer bias.

• Interviewer Bias

Collecting Your Data

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Now that your interviewers are trained, the interview (data collection) process can begin. Your participants, or candidates, will come from referrals. The human resources department will look at application materials (e.g., cover letters and resumes) and send candidates that match basic qualifications for the job on to the interview phase. Your well-trained interviewers will start each interview with a purpose statement, and then go through established interview questions in the determined order, being sure to ask additional questions when more information is needed or desired. You will use the same interview protocol for each job posting to help standardize the interview process. The interviews will be audio-recorded (with the interviewees’ consent), so the interviewers do not have to rely on memory in analyzing the candidates.

Analyzing the Data

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The interviewer records and transcribes the interviews with three candidates. As always, we need to pick the best tool for analyzing these interviews (i.e., the data).

• Content Analysis

• Conversation Analysis

• Grounded Theory Technique

Take Home Message

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Congratulations! You have just developed a new protocol for employee hiring interviews. Be sure to check in on this protocol periodically to determine if any adjustments need to be made.

Congratulations

Congratulations! You have successfully completed this activity.

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