Interviews form the basic selection procedure for most large companies. However, some people think an interview is not a reliable means of choosing who to employ, and there are some other better selection methods. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Interviews have long been the core recruitment step for most large enterprises, but they are criticised as an unreliable employee selection approach, with calls for alternative more effective methods. From my perspective, interviews have inherent limitations, but combining them with other complementary methods is the optimal solution, rather than abandoning interviews entirely.
Admittedly, relying solely on interviews can lead to biased recruitment outcomes. Interviewers often make judgements based on first impressions, such as a candidate’s appearance, articulation or even shared hobbies, rather than their actual professional competence. For example, many talented introverted candidates who are poor at self-presentation may be eliminated, while candidates with strong social skills but insufficient work ability may get the offer. Besides, many interviewees prepare scripted answers beforehand, making it hard for interviewers to assess their real problem-solving capabilities.
However, interviews cannot be replaced, as they are the only way to evaluate a candidate’s soft skills that are vital for most positions, such as communication skills, stress tolerance and quick thinking. For customer-facing roles like sales or client management, these soft skills directly determine work performance, and cannot be measured through written tests or resume screening alone.
Better selection results can be achieved by supplementing interviews with other methods. For technical positions, for instance, companies can add skill-based written tests or practical operation assessments before interviews, to first screen out candidates who lack hard professional skills, then use interviews to assess their comprehensive quality. For senior management positions, companies can also arrange trial work or case study assessments to test candidates’ actual decision-making ability, in addition to multi-round interviews.
In conclusion, interviews alone are not a reliable selection tool, but there is no better single method to replace them. The most reliable recruitment approach is to combine interviews with targeted ability assessments, to evaluate candidates comprehensively.