How Can HR Design Effective Psychological Interviews to Assess Key Candidate Traits?

Dear All,

While assessing a candidate, we look for a number of attributes/characteristics during our Recruitment & Selection Process. In my opinion, technical knowledge of the candidate couldn't be ignored, but the most important areas to focus on are:

1- Behaviour/Attitude of the candidate
2- Mindset
3- Commitment to the organization (whether he'll remain there or not)
4- Sincerity & Faithfulness
5- Sense of Responsibility

Probably, the best way is to inculcate the psychological test or interview of the candidate, but "what to ask in that interview" or "how to prepare that psychological test" to assess all these and other characteristics of the candidate is a great challenge for HR Professionals.

If we are able to design such tests and interviews (questions, testing all these), then many problems could be solved. I would request you all to share your comments and formats of the same if any one of you have designed the formats.

Regards,
Khalid

Dear All,

These are very important areas and shouldn't be overlooked because education or technical knowledge of personnel could be improved through many sources, but it's very difficult to develop in real the sense of responsibility, commitment, positive attitude, and mindset, etc.

So please do think about these and share your comments and techniques to achieve all of this as well.

Regards,
Khalid

Hi……..
You can put a Scenario in front of his/her, related to job position for which you are taking interview……
For example: you can ask to candidate what will be your responsibilities when a labor is injured in your company as a HR Executive/Manager….
His/her answer shows behavior, commitment with the organization and the most and important thing his/her responsibilities as a HR Executive/Manager which he/she has set in his mind…..
I think it could be one thing through which you can judge.
Regards,
Saba

Hi Khalid,

I agree with you to a very limited extent. The accuracy of PTs to predict the behavior/attitude of an applicant has always been under scrutiny. Also, there is always a lot that can be manipulated in the questions posed in such tests. The ability to predict and map a person's soft configuration comes from the experience of the recruiter. He simply has to be smarter than the interviewee and frame his questions to bring out the real personality of the applicant.

If you want to try out PTs, there are numerous options available in the market. You can approach any consultant's office. Developing it in-house will be a time-consuming task. You will have to map the desired competencies for each position and frame questions to assess the same. However, I do not guarantee very enthusiastic results. You will have to test and retest it on a control group.

Meraj

Hi Dear,

Well, you could be right to an extent as the interviewee could be smart enough to attempt the test in such a way that one couldn't ever judge the exact mindset or nature of the personnel.

For this, definitely, the interviewer has to be experienced in face reading (reading from the expressions), reading the body language of the candidate, and asking the questions to assess the candidate's personality and other areas. It was also truly said that we must put him in some kind of situation, but probably we can't assess everything by putting him in such situations.

Again, it's not very easy to have expertise in all these areas while reading all that is in the mind of the interviewee and knowing exactly whether he is speaking the truth or lying.

I want to discuss these to have full command over these, so could you identify some of the sources through which all these skills could be strengthened? Also, if someone has designed a structured interview of such nature, then please do share the sample of the same as well.

Regards,

Khalid