Interview Success - The Impact of the Interviewer

Question

Does an interviewee's success in an interview depends more on the interviewer than on themselves?

Answer

The interview process is used by companies to decide which candidates to hire following the recruitment process. Interviews are supposed to be used for potential candidates to sell themselves to the potential employee and showcase why they’d be of benefit to the company. By the end of the interview the interviewee should have highlighted to the interviewer their qualities as a potential fit for the interviewers company, however, this is often not the case because the interviewer will have made decisions that negatively impact on the interviewee. Possible examples of this include – The interviewer may conduct the interview even though in their mind they have already selected the candidate they desire in a previous interview. In this case the interviewer may ask unnecessarily difficult questions to dishearten or put off the interviewee. In which case, the interviewee would fail the interview process at no fault of their own. In some cases the interviewee may appear more competent than the interviewer, in situations like this the interviewer may feel threatened by the interviewee and decide against giving them the job as they fear the potential candidate may surpass them. Other possibilities could include the candidates providing responses to the interviewer that are beyond them, in which case the interviewer would not understand the responses leading them to doubt the interviewee. In both these situations the candidate would not be selected with the blame for this not falling on them. Another example would be when the interviewer is looking for a specific quality in the interviewee that is not common practise to see in an interview, if the interviewer does not ask to see this then the interviewee is unlikely to display the necessary qualities. Because of this they will not get the job, with the fault for this not falling on them.

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