Situational and Behavioural Interview Question - Coursework Example

Download file to see previous pages Structured interviews aim to promote objectivity and minimize objectivity which is inherent in unstructured interviews. This makes these two types of interviews more valid and reliable than the unstructured one when being used for HR recruitment and selection processes.

Over the years, structured interviews have gained popularity in the corporate world. Situational interviews are one type of structured interviews (Mauer, Solamon, & Troxtel 1998, 128; Mauer et al. 2001, 709).

In a situational interview, the questions revolve around a given situation or scenario where the interviewee is supposed to answer what she will likely do in order to address the situation (Huffcutt et al. 2001, 619-620). The questions in these interviews try to determine what the interviewee is likely to do in a given situation which is related to the job (Kataoka, Latham, & Whyte 1997, 47-48). Because the future intentions are implied in the answers of the interviewee for a given situation, this type of structured interview is said to be grounded on the goal-setting theory of management (Huffcutt et al. 2001, 619-620). With the interviewee's intentions, its future actions as related to her job can be gauged.
Another type of structured interview is called the behavioral interview (Financial Executive 2007). While the situational interviews focus on the future intentions of the interviewee in a fictional scenario but one that is related to the job, in a behavioral interview, on the other hand, a similar situation where the interviewee has experienced in the past is probed and what the interviewee has done in order to address it (Huffcutt et al. 2001, 619-620; Walker 2007).

The major difference between the situational interviews and behavioral interviews lies in the emphasis on what could determine the performance of the interviewee in relation to the job. For the situational interviews, future intentions are considered the determinants of future actions within a given job-related scenario (Huffcutt et al. 2001, 619-620). ...Download file to see next pagesRead More