6.3 Types of Interviews

Interviewing can be time-consuming, so choosing the right type of interview(s) for the individual job makes sense. Some jobs, for example, may require only one interview, while another may require an initial screening telephone interview and at least one or two selection interviews. Remember that there will likely be other methods to evaluate a candidate’s potential, such as testing, which may be done before or after the selection interviews.

Here are the different types of interviews:

Traditional Interview

This type of interview is often called an unstructured interview, as discussed earlier. The interview is free-flowing; the interviewer can change questions. The interviewer is able to conduct the interview however he or she thinks is best. They trust their judgement about whether the person is a good candidate for the job, relying more on their ‘gut feeling.’ Often, interviewers who conduct unstructured interviews fail to identify some high-quality candidates. While this type of interview is still popular, more organizations are using structured interviews, in which interviews are identical and conducted consistently across applicants.

Telephone Interview

A telephone interview is used as an initial screening interview to narrow down the list of applicants receiving a selection interview. It can be used to determine information from an applicant that would automatically rule out having them do the selection interview. For example, if you receive two hundred résumés and narrow these down to twenty-five, it is still unrealistic to interview twenty-five people in person. At this point, you may decide to conduct phone interviews with those twenty-five, which could narrow the in-person interviews to a more manageable ten or so people.

Information Interview

Informational interviews are usually used when there is no specific job opening, but the candidate is exploring possibilities in a given career field. The advantage of conducting these types of interviews is the ability to find great people ahead of a job opening.

Meal Interviews

Many organizations offer to take the candidate to lunch or dinner for the interview. This can allow for a more casual meeting where, as the interviewer, you might be able to gather more information about the person, such as their manners and treatment of waitstaff. This type of interview might be considered an unstructured interview since it would tend to be more of a conversation as opposed to a session consisting of specific questions and answers.

Case Interview

A case interview is an interview form used mostly by management consulting firms and investment banks in which the job applicant is given a question, situation, problem or challenge and asked to resolve the situation. The case problem is often a business situation or a business case that the interviewer has worked on in real life.

Panel Interview

A panel interview involves three or more people, the job candidate, plus at least two people representing the employer (the panel). In this type of interview, panellists take turns asking questions of the candidate and make a note of the candidate’s responses. One panellist may ask technical questions, another may ask management questions, another may ask customer service-related questions, etc. The benefits of the panel approach to interviewing include time savings over serial interviewing, more focused interviews as there is often less time spent building rapport with small talk, and an “apples to apples” comparison because each interviewer/panellist gets to hear the answers to the same questions. Having more than one person evaluating a candidate’s interview can also decrease the potential for bias.