Applying Electronic Interviewing Technology to the Candidate Recruitment and Screening Process

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Introduction

The dynamics of our free market economy frequently create situations whereby a large number of individuals must compete for a limited number of desirable openings or positions that are available within an organization or institution. Examples of such situations include securing employment in the public or private sector, gaining admission to a college or university, or gaining acceptance into a professional or social organization. In all such situations, the organization seeking to fill the position or opening must employ one or more evaluation methods in order to select the most qualified candidate. It is generally accepted that the evaluation methods used for this selection process must be as objective and comprehensive as possible. It is also generally recognized that, in most cases, such methods should be both time and cost efficient.

Many organizations utilize a personal interview as the principal or primary candidate evaluation method. Personal interviews may take many forms, but typically consist of a meeting between one or more interviewers and the candidate. The meeting may take place in a "face to face" mode, with the interviewer and candidate physically present in the same location, or be mediated by an electronic device, such as the telephone or a videoconferencing device. During the interview, the interviewer poses a series of questions or prompts which are intended to elicit an immediate response from the candidate. The immediacy of the personal interview compels the candidate to provide an appropriate response in a timely manner. The sense of "pressure" perceived by the candidate is generally recognized to be a key factor in the effectiveness of the personal interview as an evaluation method.

The candidate’s responses typically provide factual information regarding his/her suitability for the position. In addition, while observing the candidate’s response to the question, the interviewer may gain important insights regarding the candidate’s character and personality traits. These insights are gained by observing the candidate’s eye movements, facial expressions, body positions, gestures, and other non-verbal cues. It is generally agreed that the information regarding the candidate’s character and personality traits, obtained by observing the candidate’s non-verbal responses, may be just as important to the selection process as the candidate’s verbal responses. This is particularly true when the candidate’s character and personality traits are considered to be germane to the candidate’s suitability for the position.

Drawbacks of Traditional Interviewing Methods

It is clear why many organizations utilize the personal interview as the principal or primary candidate evaluation method. However, the personal interview, as it is currently practiced, has a number of inherent drawbacks and flaws that seriously limit its value and utility to organizations performing evaluation and selection of candidates.

First, the personal interview requires one or more interviewers to personally participate in every interview that is conducted as part of the candidate evaluation and selection process. This means that the personal interview, as a selection method, places substantial time demands upon the interviewers of the organization.

Second, the personal interview typically does not provide a convenient or practical method to record, store, and retrieve a permanent audio-visual record of the interactions that take place during the interview. This means that the details of the interview, including the candidate’s responses to specific questions, both verbal and non-verbal, reside only in the personal memory of the individual who conducted the interview. Such personal memories are subject to degradation over time, as well as complete loss if the individual subsequently becomes unavailable to the organization.

Third, in the absence of a permanent record, there is no practical means to perform an objective evaluation of two or more candidates by comparing the actual candidates’ responses to the same, or similar, questions. Currently, such comparisons can only be performed, in an imaginary sense, by calling upon the personal memory of the individual who conducted the interview. This method of comparison can hardly be considered either reliable or objective.

Fourth, in the absence of a permanent record, only those individuals present at the interview are afforded the opportunity to evaluate the candidate’s verbal and non-verbal responses. These individuals may not have the proper skills or training needed to perform the evaluation, or may be conducting the interview under adverse personal or professional circumstances. This may result in the candidate receiving an incomplete, inappropriate, or subjective evaluation.

Finally, it is recognized that during a personal interview, the interviewer may behave, or may be perceived to behave, in an inappropriate or undesirable manner. Such behaviors, or the perception thereof, may occur spontaneously during the course of the interview, and therefore cannot be anticipated or prevented. Again, as no permanent record of the interview is recorded, the organization conducting the interview may therefore be exposed to a variety of legal issues arising as a result of conducting personal interviews as they are currently practiced.

Advantages of Electronic Interviewing

Conducting candidate screening interviews via an automated electronic system addresses all of the drawbacks described above, and thus offers many advantages over the traditional "one-on-one" candidate screening methods. Three major advantages of the electronic interviewing and screening method are described below.

First and foremost, the electronic personal interview (EPI) method offers a tremendous savings of time and effort to the hiring organization. The hiring authority needs to participate in the interview only once -- when the electronic interview is created. Once the EPI has been created, it can be presented to an unlimited number of candidates, anywhere in the world, without further participation on the part of the hiring authority. Furthermore, the decision to view the results of the interview, either in whole or in part, is entirely up to the discretion of the hiring authority.

Second, the results of the screening interview, which are automatically captured, stored, and organized by the electronic interviewing system, can be accessed and reviewed by anyone within the hiring organization. This means that the candidate screening task, which is traditionally concentrated within a small number of individuals (those performing the actual interview) can now be distributed among the entire resource pool of the enterprise. The availability of a permanent audio/visual record of the entire interview provides the organization with an unprecedented level of control over the entire candidate screening and evaluation process.

Third, the electronic interview process ensures that each participating candidate will be presented with identical interview content, thus ensuring that the interview process is fair and objective for every candidate, regardless of the circumstances of the interview. And, should any questions arise regarding the fairness or objectivity of the interview, a permanent audio/visual record is available for review.

It's clear that the electronic interview method offers a number of advantages over the traditional methods employed for candidate interviewing and screening. The electronic interviewing solution offered by Contexxa Corporation is described in detail below.

Applying Technology to the Personal Interview Process

Contexxa Corporation's InterviewConnect!® Electronic Screening and Selection (ESS) system allows any organization desiring to conduct a candidate selection process to create one or more "electronic personal interviews" in which the equivalent of a personal interview is conducted, via automated means.

The electronic personal interview (EPI) consists of a series of electronically encoded interview questions or prompts that are presented to a candidate undergoing an interview. The candidate’s responses to the prompts are also electronically encoded and stored in a centralized data storage facility. Once the responses have been stored in the central storage facility, individuals within the organization can use the system to review the individual candidate’s responses, compare the responses of two or more candidates, and engage in a variety of other evaluation activities facilitated by various features of the ESS system.

InterviewConnect!® ESS System Overview

The InterviewConnect!® ESS system consists of a number of web-based, enterprise-enabled software modules which allow the organization to create, present, capture, review, and compare electronic personal interviews. These modules all store and retrieve data from a centrally hosted relational database.

The Interview Builder module of the InterviewConnect!® ESS system includes a method for recording and encoding the questions or prompts, which compose the electronic personal interview (EPI). These question are stored as discrete media files that can be included in any EPI and shared among multiple EPIs. The Presentation module of the ESS system provides a method for presenting the media files that compose the questions or prompts of the EPI to a candidate undergoing the EPI. Finally, the Review module of the ESS system allows users within the organization to review, compare, and evaluate the results of the electronic interview. As the results of the interview are stored in a web-enabled relational database, the interview can be accessed from any location. The Review module also include tools that facilitate a consensus based decision making process.

Interview Builder Module

The ESS Interview Builder module provides the complete set of tools required to build, preview, and distribute electronic personal interviews. EPI's are built from a collection of streaming media files and text-based questions which are stored in the central ESS system database. Any authorized ESS user can access these files to build a sequence of interview questions which are custom-tailored to the specific requirements of the interview. The module provides the individual creating the EPI with the ability to include any available media file in the EPI and to specify the order in which the media files and text based questions will be presented to the candidate undergoing the EPI.

Interview Presentation Module

The Presentation Module of the EES system presents the interview questions to the candidate and provides a means for electronically capturing, encoding, and storing the candidate’s responses. In order to closely reproduce the experience of a "live" personal interview, the ESS system presents the EPI questions in a manner such that the candidate experiences psychological "pressure" to respond to the questions in a timely and succinct manner. This is achieved by displaying the each interview question and starting the subsequent audio/video capture process automatically. Thus, the candidate must undergo the interview just as he or she would when facing a "live" interviewer, without the ability to stop, pause, or repeat an interview question.

When the candidate has completed the EPI, the system automatically organizes the media files representing the electronically encoded candidate responses and transmits the files to a relational database hosted at a centralized data storage facility. This data can be hosted at the customer's data center, or at a facility managed by Contexxa. These files can then be accessed by any authorized user on the ESS system.

Interview Evaluation Module

Once the media and data files representing the candidate’s responses have been received and stored, the Evaluation Module of the ESS system allows members of the organization to review these files in a variety of ways. Media files representing the candidate’s responses may be played, repeated, paused, or closed at will. The text responses can be reviewed, evaluated, and scored. Selected segments of an interview, or the entire interview, can be shared among interested parties to facilitate the decision making process.

The Evalution Module of the ESS system provides complete flexibility to the user when reviewing the candidate’s responses. Interviews may be viewed in their entirety or in selected segments. The responses may be viewed in conjunction with the questions that elicited them, or without. Review of the responses may be interrupted at any time to make notes, to record a qualitative or quantitative evaluation, or to review other data associated with the candidate. The ESS system also provides a method to share any or all of an individual candidate’s responses with others in the organization via electronic mail. Additionally, the system provides users with the ability to perform a simultaneously juxtaposed "side by side" comparison of two or more candidates by opening two or more candidate evaluation windows and/or screen regions in a concurrent manner.

Conclusion

Contexxa Corporation's InterviewConnect!® Electronic Screening and Selection system may be used in any screening or selection activity that is intended to reduce a large pool of potentially qualified individuals to a smaller group, using the evaluation of personal interviews with the individuals as a principal or primary basis for selection. The greatest return on investment may be realized when the ESS system is used as a tool for efficiently screening a large number of candidates who have applied for a position, or for multiple positions, within the organization.

Contexxa's ESS solution can deliver an unprecedented savings of time and effort to the interviewing organization, while concurrently offering a significant increase in the overall quality of the candidate screening and evaluation process. The organization also benefits from the enhanced flexibility that is provided by the ESS solution. For these reasons, Contexxa Corporation recommends that any organization involved in the effort of conducting candidate screening interviews on a volume basis consider implementing our Electronic Screening and Selection solution.

© 2002 Contexxa Corporation. All rights reserved. | Back