Effective Interviewing

Effective Interviewing:

A Handbook of Skills

and Techniques

KOGAN PAGE

Robert Edenborough

Effective Interviewing:

A handbook of skills and

techniques

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Effective Interviewing:

A handbook of skills and

techniques

2nd edition

Robert Edenborough

First published in 1996

First paperback edition published in 1999

Second edition 2002

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or

review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication

may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the

prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction

in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning

reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned

addresses:

Kogan Page Kogan Page US

120 Pentonville Road 22 Broad Street

London N1 9JN Milford CT 06460

UK USA

© Robert Edenborough, 1996, 1999, 2002

The right of Robert Edenborough to be identified as author of this work has been

asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 7494 3755 3

Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

To James and Tom, who have always asked lots of questions

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Contents

About the author ix

List of figures xi

Preface xiii

Preface to the second edition xv

Acknowledgements xvii

1 The place of interviews 1

The interviewing scene 1; Plan of the book 3;

Definitions and origins 4; Interviewing processes 7;

Conscious versus unconscious 10; Other exchanges 12;

Summary 14

2 ‘Conventional’ selection interviewing 15

Interviewing is popular 15; How to do conventional

interviewing 20; Intention and practice 26;

Interviewing horror stories 28; Summary 31

3 Structured interviewing in selection 33

Scope of structured interviews 33; Deriving interview

models 36; Criterion, competency-based and critical

incident interviews 44; Structured psychometric

interviews (SPI) 48; Summary 56

4 The extended interview 57

Degrees of structure 57; The board or panel interview 58;

Assessment centres 59; Feedback and follow-up

interviewing 64; Work sampling interviews and

auditions 66; Conclusion 67; Summary 67

5 The use of interviews in managing and enhancing

performance 69

Introduction 69; Appraisals 70; Performance

improvement and disciplinary interviews 76;

Staff development 78; Summary 85

6 Interviews in counselling and guidance 87

Introduction 87; Redundancy counselling 91;

Vocational guidance 96; Other crisis counselling 98;

Marriage guidance and bereavement 99;

Summary 102

7 Shifting the focus 103

Introduction 103; Job evaluation interviewing 103;

Selection design again 106; The interviewee as

expert 106; Gathering evidence in legal

proceedings 107; Survey interviewing 108;

Survey interview methods 109;

Survey applications 113; Summary 120

8 A variety of interview applications 123

Introduction 123; Journalistic interviews 123;

The ‘post-event’ interview 128; Examinations and

interviews 129; Interviews in the helping

professions 130; Psychological and other social

science interviews 132; Management reviews 135;

Summary 136

9 The future of interviews 137

Interview research 137; Changing patterns of

employment 141; Changing practices 144;

Surfing the communication waves 145

Appendix I: Sample SPI report 149

Appendix II: Some UK counselling organisations 153

References 155

Index 165

viii Contents

About the author

Dr Robert Edenborough is a principal consultant in the Executive

Search and Selection Division of KPMG in the UK. He heads the

Management Review and Assessment Practice there. He previously

led the Consulting Practice at ASE – a leading test publisher and prior

to that was principal consultant with MSL, the international recruit￾ment and consultancy specialists. A chartered occupational psycholo￾gist, Robert Edenborough has considerable experience of designing

and applying interviews in organisations as diverse as the Ministry of

Defence, the NHS and a range of financial service institutions. He has

held senior posts with several major international companies: Head of

Psychometric Testing and Assessment in ICL (1978–84), Managing

Director of Selection Research Ltd (1984–89) and Head of the HR

consulting division of Oasis Management Consultancy (1989–91). A

regular contributor of papers at various international conferences, Dr

Edenborough is also the author of Using Psychometrics (Kogan

Page).

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List of figures

Figure 1.1 Interviewing with a pre-determined structure,

financial advice. 8

Figure 1.2 Options in a counselling interview. 9

Figure 1.3 Some conscious and unconscious indications in

interviews. 13

Figure 2.1 The mutual halo effect. 25

Figure 2.2 Pros and cons of different interview configurations. 29

Figure 4.1 Stepwise process in assessment. 60

Figure 4.2 Competency coverage by exercise type. 64

Figure 5.1 Sources of information in two different interview

settings. 71

Figure 5.2 Development centre, summary results. 79

Figure 6.1 Other’s discovery and self-discovery. 90

Figure 6.2 Stepwise programme of redundancy support. 93

Figure 7.1 Information flows and decision making in a range

of interview applications. 104

Figure 7.2 Market research interviewing without and with

computer assistance. 112

Figure 7.3 Steps in conducting a survey in an organisation. 115

Figure 7.4 Two common survey scaling formats. 116

Figure 7.5 Survey findings and band of error. 117

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Preface

I started specifically to think about a book on interviewing while

preparing my previous book; Using Psychometrics (Kogan Page). I

had been struck then by the fact that although there were obvious

opportunities for linking different systems for studying other people,

these were rarely grasped. The various gaps, overlaps, redundancies

and complementarities among, say, a three test psychometric battery

and a standardised interview process, tended not to be articulated and

seemed little understood. This got me thinking about interviewing as

such more widely. Why are conventional selection interviews so

much maligned and so widely relied upon? Was it because all of us,

not just psychologists, are experts on people? Do journalists’ inter￾views, the questioning of witnesses and the use of a tasting panel to

try out a new ketchup recipe have anything in common? Are all of

these interactions simply more or less specialised forms of that

important part of everyday communication: asking and answering

questions?

In fact my concentration on interviewing pre-dated the thoughtful￾ness arising from writing about psychometric tests. I had been work￾ing for some time with criterion-based interviews for managers.

Originally this work had been focused on assessment centres where

this form of interview was being used as much as anything to help

cover competencies not seen as readily assessed by exercises. (Staff

development was one of these.) I then became exposed to the very

different techniques involved in conducting counselling interviews.

This included an intense period when I had central responsibility for

performance improvement and redundancy counselling for managers.

This was followed by my first exposure to what I have labelled the

Structured Psychometric Interview (SPI) in which questions and

interpretative guidelines are carefully researched and rigidly applied.

All of these cases had in common the idea of focusing upon the

individual, helping to make decisions about him or helping him to

make decisions about himself. However the generality of the inter￾view situation struck me as I considered the range of circumstances in

which I had used interviews to gather information from individuals,

but to inform decisions that did not affect them directly. Thus as an

xiv Preface

applied experimental psychologist I had conducted debriefing inter￾views as part of laboratory experiments and equipment trials. Latterly

as a management consultant I had also used interviews to establish

competencies, plan climate surveys and to tease out scenarios for use

in development centres. I became aware, too, that for many of those

whose jobs I was studying – from salesreps to lawyers – interviewing

was an important part of their working or professional life.

The aim of this book, then, is to provide a view of interviewing

practices and phenomena to aid the manager or personnel specialist

as practitioner. In nearly all work settings better understanding of

others, whether candidates, peers, subordinates or clients, makes for

better results. By casting the net of practice quite wide I have endeav￾oured to provide reference points for those whose practical concerns

do, in fact, include interviewing, but who may not have had the

opportunity to give much thought to interviewing methods as such.

By indicating some of the links, continuities and pervasive issues in

interviewing I hope I shall also provide some stimulus to the serious

or amateur student of psychology or other fields of social science.

To seek to cover all interview usage in a single volume would be

unrealistic if not impossible. What I have essayed in this book is to

cover a broad sweep, focusing in most detail on those types of inter￾view where I feel some of the insights of personal experience may be

of use to the reader, but hopefully underlining throughout the very

generality of the interview situation.