Abstract
If you ever tried to solve an issue with finding an employee for a particular position in your company, you must know that it’s quite difficult to find a professional. Sometimes this issue is solved simply but sometimes you need a whole raw of tests and interviews to see what kind of person is sitting in front of you and if you can trust him/her with an important job. Big companies hire special managers to find proper workers. And if you have a rather small enterprise, you have to find them yourself. It’s not that easy – an employee has to work to full effect and warrant the resources that were put in him, bringing only success to a company. The most important thing is to find out as much as you can about your employee: if he/she has some business qualities, if he/she is able to amuse your clients with his/her intellect, if he/she can control his/her emotions, how he/she will communicate with your colleagues and clients. For these aims interviews and tests are used.
STATENMENT OF A PROBLEM
The first time some kind of an interview was taken in ancient times. An ancient Greece scientist Pythagoras thought up some tasks that could say if a person is clever or ignorant. He believed that it’s every tree can be carved into Mercury (Williams, 2003, p. 4).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Assignment tests can be different types: professional, personal, intellectual, math, logical, verbal; there’re tests that check your reaction to stress, your attentiveness, acumen, educability; tests with and without lie detector and the most common for sale companies “how to sell a pen” test. But let’s look at the different types of tests and try to reveal advantages and disadvantages of them, finding the most useful and appropriate one (Huffcutt, 2001, p, 78).
In our study we compare professional and psychological tests. A professional test for a book-keeper contain questions about accounting; for a secretary – questions about basics off clerical work, grammar check, attentiveness to details, print speed, quick and effective search for information; for tax service specialist – tax tests; for lawyers and economists – check of juridical and economical competence, foreign language knowledge, ability of using particular computer programs. Professional tests contain questions with two answer: yes or no. Sometimes an employee has to interpret his/her answer. Using these kinds of explanations you see the answer right away. And with test keys you can evaluate the test easily and make your decision. An employee who knows a theory, answers the most quantity of questions right has a big chance to win a position (Arvey, 1982, p. 2).
In comparison to professional tests personal tests cause a lot of negativity form employees’ side. Obviously, you can just talk to employee and understand what he/she is like. But the first impression can often be wrong. That’s why a personal test can be a perfect choice because it gives a whole and right impression about an employee. It gives you a guarantee for a better candidate. Most employers don’t want to waste their time on psychological tests but pay the main attention only to interview, but some problems with colleagues can suddenly occur. The choice of testing an employee can be most effective and useful in most situations by employment but it shouldn’t exclude an interview (Harris, 1989, p. 8).
For our study a behavioral and a situational type are important. In a behavioral interview an interviewer is asked not about hypothetical problems but about real ones that the interviewer solved in his/her work. This kind of interview method shows the quality of candidate’s knowledge and his/her professional range of vision. This kind of interview is used in any kind of business sphere. During the interview an employer collect full behavioral examples from a candidate’s experience. Each example explains:
Situation a candidate faced
Action that he/she took
Result he/she had at the end
These components can be remembered by an abbreviation STAR – Situation, Task, Action, Result. 2-3 full behavioral examples are enough to have a wide picture of candidate’s experience (Eder, 1989, p. 67). These are questions applied for a behavioral interview:
Tell me how you made your job under pressing
Solve a conflict with your colleague
Used you creativity for solving a problem
Missed an obvious solution of a problem
Confirm your colleagues to work according to your plan
Situational interview in comparison to behavioral one implies concrete situation a candidate faced in his/her work. Here’re some questions:
Tell me about the biggest potential client you had a conversation with
Tell me about the most difficult conversation you had with a potential client
What is a great team for you?
It’s very important to get a description of a concrete situation in a candidate’s practice and not just common information like: I had these kinds of situation really often (Schmitt, 1976, p. 6).
Basing on our research we can notice that the both types of assessments can be useful in different kinds of situations. Interviews are more useful by employing teachers, interpreters, secretaries and so on. But if you’re highly interested in professional abilities of an employee you cannot make a decision with a thoroughly thought written test. The combination of these two types: interview and written test would be the wisest decision you can make (Wiesner, 1988, p. 13).
FINDINGS
Basing our knowledge on the literature review, we find out the following things:
Assignment tests can be different types: professional, personal, intellectual, math, logical, verbal; there’re tests that check your reaction to stress, your attentiveness, acumen, educability; tests with and without lie detector and the most common for sale companies “how to sell a pen” test.
Professional tests contain questions with two answers: yes or no.
An employee who knows a theory, answers the most quantity of questions right has a big chance to win a position.
In comparison to professional tests personal tests cause a lot of negativity form employees’ side.
A personal test can be a perfect choice because it gives a whole and right impression about an employee.
The choice of testing an employee can be most effective and useful in most situations by employment but it shouldn’t exclude an interview.
In a behavioral interview an interviewer is asked not about hypothetical problems but about real ones that the interviewer solved in his/her work.
Situational interview in comparison to behavioral one implies concrete situation a candidate faced in his/her work.
It’s very important to get a description of a concrete situation in a candidate’s practice and not just common information like: I had these kinds of situation really often
Both types of assessments can be useful in different kinds of situations.
Interviews are more useful by employing teachers, interpreters, secretaries and so on.
The combination of these two types: interview and written test would be the wisest decision you can make.
CONCLUSION
In our study we compared interview and noninterview assessments and researched their types. We noticed that different types can be useful in a particular situation. Employers can use any type of interviewing a candidate for a particular position and his/her decision would be the most appropriate one if he/she uses a mixture of written and oral tasks. This kind of method is the most effective one because it let an employer to understand not only professional competence of a candidate but also his/her personal qualities and predict his/her behavior in a working team.
References
Arvey R. D. (1982). The employment interview: a summary and review of recent research. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1982.tb02197.x/full
Huffcutt A. I. (2001). Identification and meta-analytic assessment of psychological constructs measured in employment interviews. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2001-18662-008
Eder, R. (1989). The employment interview: theory, research and practice. New York, NY: PsycINFO.
Harris M. M. (1989). Reconsidering the employment interview: a review of recent literature and suggestions for future research. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1989.tb00673.x/full
Schmitt N. (1976). Social and situational determinants of interview decisions: implications for the employment interview. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1976.tb00404.x/full
Wiesner W. H (1988). A meta-analytic investigation of the impact of interview format and degree of structure on validity of the employment interview. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8325.1988.tb00467.x/full
Williams C. J. (2003). Pre-employment screening and assessment interview process. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/patents/US6618734
