Author: Timothy Wingate, Assistant Professor, Organizational Behavior & Human Resource Management, Wilfrid Laurier University

Job interviews are an essential part of hiring. In Canada, interviews are the most popular hiring tool. However, there is a concerning gap between the science of interviewing and the way interviews are commonly practiced in workplaces. Employers often hold misconceptions about their ability to evaluate a job candidate accurately without the use of a structured set of interview questions and a formal scoring procedure for evaluating the candidate’s answers. We put too much stock in our ability to evaluate an applicant based on casual conversation. These misconceptions can lead employers to ignore the most effective interviewing strategies. At the…