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Interviewing

John L. Gordon July 2006

Abstract

Many organisations have a need for knowledge and skills connected with interviewing in general. In a lot of cases however, organisations consider interviews in isolated cases such as recruitment interviews or knowledge elicitation interviews. There are many types and functions of interviews and there is underpinning knowledge associated with all of them. This work considered the interview in its general sense and does not attempt to prescribe methods for individual interview cases. The work also acknowledges the different styles and personalities of different people that may indeed all be good interviewers but may have quite different approaches.

The general interview has a specific purpose, which is to gather information. There may also be a secondary purpose for the framework that the interview is contained within such as identifying the best of several candidates for a job. This secondary objective for the interview may be the primary purpose or objective for the project or activity.

Interviews are about personal interaction and it is clear that this interaction needs to be considered carefully by a good interviewer. Seeing a situation from the perspective of another person is not easy for everyone but a good interviewer must attempt to do this.

The core theme of this work is knowledge. A Knowledge Structure Map of this area has been created in order to inform and to stimulate debate. If one is to become a better interviewer then one should know what they need to know in order to achieve this. Some of the knowledge items on the map can have a significant effect on an interview although they may not be considered as primary features. Such issues include TRUTH, RISK and TRUST.

This work ends by revisiting the main point, that of how to improve interviewing. Some useful tips and suggestions are made that are claimed may even benefit an individual in their general work and private lives as well as help them to become better interviewers.

1. Background

AKRI has a strong interest in interviewing for a number of reasons, many of which will be common to other organisations. These reasons include recruitment, staff development, customer satisfaction etc. In addition and in common with many knowledge based industries we also have a need to interview in order to capture knowledge and to identify and translate knowledge. This sort of interviewing has a different emphasis than that required for recruitment etc but nevertheless has the same general objective. Furthermore, AKRI has a central role for interviewing as part of its Knowledge Structure Mapping (KSM) methodology and in the pursuit of this work has carried out a great deal of interviews in recent years. The requirements of interviews for KSM are even more rigorous than those needed for knowledge capture but they are more focused and therefore less varied.

AKRI is involved in the dissemination of the KSM methodology to other practitioners. One of the key elements in the methodology is the interviewing component. If this is not done correctly then the resulting Knowledge Structure Map may have little meaning. During the course of dissemination work it has become clear that good interviewing is more difficult and less widely practiced than was realised. Even experienced interviewers often adopt a self centred rather than an information centred approach and a few even fail to understand the whole point of an interview whilst still carrying out a procedure that utilises the resources that a good interview would utilise. It is the need to identify ways of improving interviewing techniques whilst not attempting to smother individual style and individual strengths that is the driving force for this work.

1.1 Improving Interviewing

What sort of things can be done to improve the general standard of interviewing? Many areas of advice and support for interviews concentrate on greatest business need, that of recruitment, and focus on what questions to ask and how to score the answers given. More of this type of training (if training is the correct word) is said to be a way to improving interviewing. Yet this would only work for recruitment interviews because the questions are focused on recruitment. I would argue that interviews of different types have a common core and the training mentioned above to improve recruitment interviews would do little to address or even explain the common core.

So maybe this is the first thing that could be done to improve interviewing, that is to explain to would be interviewers, what the point of interviewing is and what is the underlying theme for all interviews.

I have been part of interviews where many of the questions before and after a candidate interview concern how the interviewer performed, did they come across well, did they ask the right questions, did each interviewer cover their assigned bit of the interview properly. Sometimes such discussion has been greater than that about the candidate.

So maybe interviewers need to understand that the focus of interviews is the discovery of information and their performance is not being tested and the candidate’s performance is relevant in so much the information may be about the candidate, at least in the recruitment case it is.

I have been involved in interviews where interviewees genuinely fail to appreciate the importance of their knowledge and sometimes fail to recall highly relevant parts of it. Sometimes interviewees really don’t know where to start talking and how to make progress.

Maybe then, the interviewer should understand that their role is one of helping, supporting and advising the interviewee in ways of getting at the information required. Certainly the interviewer is responsible for creating and maintaining an environment in which the information sought is more likely to emerge.

So there are ways that interviewing can be improved. These improvements would aim at the core function of an interview rather than at specific instances or cases. This is not to deny that it is not valid to provide direct support to enable occasional interviewers to perform more effectively by giving specific targeted advice. This work however is aimed at improving the core features of interviewing, leaving each specific interview case to the educated interviewer who can then adapt their core interviewing knowledge to suite their own style and to satisfy the needs of each case.

1.2 A Descriptive Approach

The intention of this work is to provide core knowledge that will enable people to interview more effectively. For that they need to understand the key components of an interview and have a clear understanding of the objectives. It is most important that an interviewer also understands that it is not he or she that is the focus or even the most important feature of an interview. The important thing is to satisfy the objectives of an interview and deliver the information being sought as completely and accurately as possible.

This work will have a descriptive rather than a prescriptive theme. That is, it is not the aim of this study to provide instructions for interviewers. It is the aim of this study to highlight the knowledge area of interviewing and help people to understand and acquire the key elements of knowledge that will enable them to be more effective interviewers. Before looking more closely at the knowledge area of interviewing it will be useful to make sure that the interview itself is clarified and consider more carefully the roles that people have in interviews.

2. Function and Type of Interview

It will be useful to make it clear what we mean by interview by asking some basic questions. It is reasonable that an expert in interviewing would be able to provide sensible answers to the following questions:

What are the common types of and methods used in interviews?
Are the interview types really different?
What are the common features of an interview?
What is the main function of an interview?
What is the output of an interview expected to be?

Each of these questions will now be considered in a little detail.

2.1 Common interview types and methods

First I will clarify the context of the words ‘type’ and ‘method’ used here. The word ‘type’ is intended to indicate that there are several different sorts of interview in respect of the way that interviews are conducted. I have used the word ‘functions’ below to consider interviews that are typically carried out. These functions would include interview for a job for instance. Within this context the word ‘type’ is used to highlight the fact that interviews can be conducted in several different ways. The main types that I will discuss are concerned with interview focus and interview structure. The word ‘methods’ is being used to indicate that an interview can call on several different strategies to help the interviewer collect information from the interviewee. Some of these will involve general questioning and some will involve more formal methods.

A good book covering interviews, even though it is now quite old (1989), is “Knowledge Acquisition for Expert Systems” by Anna Hart. I would still recommend it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1850918309/ref=sr_aps_books_1_2/026-5609242-2518046

2.11 Interview Focus (type)

Focus within an interview is to make sure that the interview addresses a specific topic or concept or even a small part of a concept. Many interviews will have a specific focus such as what happened at a particular road accident or how do you change the wheel on a motorcar. Other interviews may not be so concerned with focus, particularly in the early stages of an investigation. Such interviews may be held in order to establish boundaries, what is to be included later and what is not. Non focused interviews are sometimes conducted as brainstorming sessions but here, there is not normally an interviewer and interviewee.

When a strict focus is required for an interview, part of the interviewers job will be to maintain that focus.

2.12 Interview Structure (type)

Structure in an interview refers to how much control the interviewer intends to have over how a particular interview is carried out. For instance, a completely unstructured interview may almost be like a conversation and the interviewee may end up deciding what to discuss and how things are discussed. A structured interview may mean that the interviewer has carefully prepared a set of questions and knows exactly how these are to be asked and what type of answer is expected for each. In such cases, a good interviewer would be able to conduct many interviews using the same structure or control and ensure that all interviews were similar. Such detailed structure may be required for a well controlled set of research interviews where it is important to remove interview bias as far as possible.

2.13Interview focus and structure

Although structure and focus can sound similar, it would be possible to design interviews that were for instance, focused and unstructured or structured and focused etc. If I wanted to interview someone about their experiences of lightning strikes at sea, I may decide on an unstructured interview because I may not be aware of what experience the interviewee actually has. However, I may want to strictly control the focus so that time is not wasted discussing which ports from around the world have the best bars (or maybe that particular example would not be a waste of time).

2.14Questioning methods

This topic is not a reference to the style of the interviewer. For instance whether the interviewer is forceful and authoritative or whether the mood is very relaxed and friendly. This of course will matter within an interview. The topic here however relates more closely to how certain formulations of questions lead to certain types of answers and consequently to the elicitation of different types of information. For instance one could ask an expert what type of computer would be best for a highly mobile executive that needs to regularly exchange information with head office staff. One could instead ask that same expert how can I decide which is the best computer for a highly mobile executive etc. Both questions concern the same thing but because they are actually different questions, the expert will probably answer each in a very different way.

It is also necessary to know what sorts of questions narrow a focus or delve deeper into a topic and which type broaden out a discussion. A question such as, can you give me a specific example of that is likely to focus more finely whilst a question like what sort of situation is this likely to occur in, is probably going to broaden the scope of the discussion.

Asking people to tell a story about a situation or describe specific cases is often likely to provide much more detail than asking the person to perform some operation on their memories such as generalising them etc. The police use a ‘cognitive interview’ for eye witness testimony, which asks people to take several different perspective views of a situation. It is argued that this helps a person to remember more detail than they would recall from a straightforward linear interview.

Human memory has many particular features and human memory is quite different to computer memory. It is interesting that quiz questions encourage people to remember isolated facts whilst research has shown that people are much better at remembering scenes and highly integrated information. The more senses that are involved in a task the better. Human memory is thought to have components for episodes and for things that affect the individual directly etc. A good interviewer should know something about this and be prepared to make use of it. (Alan Baddeley: Your Memory: A User Guide)

2.15 Formal interviewing methods

There are more formal interview methods that can be used in certain cases. Many of these have been proven within the psychology environment and are aimed at eliciting particular types of information or estimates of values of parameters such as which thing is most useful etc. A technique called ‘card sort’ can be used to help an interviewee to assign values to things or place things in order of something. The ‘repertory grid’ can be used to help assign and identify order where there is uncertainty. In general, decomposition methods can help an interviewee to break information down in order to get at the details required or identify tasks in the correct degree of precision.

A good interviewer should be aware of such methods, know where they may prove beneficial and be able to use them if required to do so.

2.2 Are interview types really different?

An impartial observer would probably notice the greatest distinction between interviews in which formal methods are being used and interviews where they were not. However, the distinction between degrees of focus and degrees of structure can lead to quite different results. The type of interview then will have a strong bearing on the information that would be gathered from the interview. Since information gathering is an important feature of interviews it is clear that interview types are really different. This difference means that an interviewer should actively select a type of interview after considering what information is to be gathered from it.

2.3 The common features of an interview

Any sort of interview will have some common features although some interviews may look quite different from each other. Interviews will have a common objective (primary objective), which is to elicit information. The whole point of an interview is the information that is elicited. Such an obvious feature can often be forgotten when people focus on themselves or on how others perform etc. If the objective is how a person performs then why not simply get them to act or carry out a task rather than conduct an interview.

The primary objective is a feature that is common to all interviews and should always be of chief concern. Other factors within an interview are to enable this primary objective to be achieved more effectively or more efficiently. Other features that are common are that there will be at least one interviewer and at least one interviewee. Most interviews will have a topic or theme. This topic may be more or less tightly focused but it will generally be there. So the common features are:

The primary objective (to elicit information)
At least one interviewee and at least one interviewer
A theme or topic

2.4The function of an interview:

Most businesses are interested in interviews as a way of identifying the best candidate for a new job. Most interviews carried out in business will be for this purpose. In general, candidate selection is possibly the most common function of an interview. Universities also use interviews to select from a large number of candidates for places on particular courses of study.

In more recent years, interviews to capture knowledge have become quite common place. Such knowledge capture may be carried out to support the construction of a computer based Knowledge Based System (KBS). Interviews for knowledge capture or knowledge elicitation will be different from those for candidate selection because a secondary objective is different. The primary objective in each cases is still to elicit information, either about a candidate or about some knowledge area. The secondary objective however will be to either lead to candidate selection, that is, discrimination between candidates, or lead to the documentation of knowledge in a formal way. There may be no discrimination involved here.

The motivation behind this work sprang from a requirement to improve interview performance for the elicitation of Knowledge Structure Maps (KSMs). The details of a knowledge structure map will not be discussed here. The requirement of KSM interviews are to elicit a map or visualisation that represents the structure of a knowledge area based on how experts may acquire that knowledge. Such knowledge acquisition is known as learning dependency because experts are expected to already know some things before they can fully understand others. That is some knowledge is dependent on a prior understanding of other knowledge. The elicitation of this sort of structure and this visualisation is quite demanding but can be done by someone that knows how to interview. However, knowing how to interview is not the same as knowing what questions to ask someone. Interviews for KSM may be similar to those for knowledge capture but are much more precisely structured.

There are other functions of interviews such as eye witness testimony or the interrogation of a spy. There would still be a common theme within such interviews however and that would be the capture of information. Quite how these interviews would be conducted would depend on many factors but someone conducting them would be more effective if they knew how to interview.

2.5 The output from an interview

The outputs from an interview have already been stated but some clarification may be useful. In section 2.3, the ideas of a primary and secondary objective were raised. These would probably lead to outputs. The primary objective of an interview is to elicit information so the main output from an interview is the information that the interview was designed to elicit. Secondary objectives could also lead to outputs from an interview although these outputs may not be direct; they are more likely to be contributions to outputs. For candidate selection, the output of the process may be the selection of one of several candidates for a job. The interview would provide information that would make a contribution to this process but would probably not be the only thing that was considered.

Even for the elicitation of the information required to construct a Knowledge Structure map, the primary objective and output would be the information required to build the map. There is likely to be a secondary objective here also and therefore a secondary output. This would probably be the answer to or solution to knowledge related issues or problems that lead to the study in the first place.

3 Interviews from the person’s perspective

In this section interviews will be considered from the person perspective. In some cases the section will address topics that have been raised before but the way that the topic is addressed will be different.

3.1 What is it like to be interviewed?

It is important that an interviewer asks this question.

The answer to the question is rather difficult to imagine however. Different people will feel differently about interviews, the type of interview will make a difference, where the interview is to be held, what the objective is and the manner of the interviewer will all make a difference. An interviewer may not be able to answer this question for an individual interviewee but should have some general understanding of what factors affect how the interviewee feels and how those factors will influence his or her feelings and responses. It may be worthwhile spending a little time discussing this issue even though, from the outset, it can be recognised that a definitive answer is unlikely.

It is probably true that all interviews will tend to increase stress for the interviewee. A brief search on the internet will uncover a large amount of advice on how to deal with interview stress. What this tends to show is that people do seem to suffer from stress during interviews. This comment is aimed at the interviewee but an interviewer may also suffer from stress.

Interviews where an interviewee is being challenged, accused or deliberately put under pressure are likely to cause the most stress. If the interview seeks to gather good quality information from the interviewee, this may not be a good strategy. If the interviewee is being placed in a stressful situation to see how they respond to stress then this is probably not an interview.

It is known that stress has an adverse effect on memory. If this is accepted, the reduction of stress in interviews is likely to improve information flow.

In a more proactive sense an interviewer can create an environment that puts an interviewee at ease and reduces stress. This means that the interviewer should know what sort of environment will be more relaxing and should know a little about how the intended interviewee may react to certain situations such as noise or dim light etc.

From either the avoidance perspective or the proactive creative perspective it seems that it is stress that is the main issue for the interviewer to deal with. A very general answer to the question at the beginning of this section could be: stressful.

3.2 Why are people interviewed?

People are interviewed because they know things or have witnessed things or have had experiences that others wish to know about. This very simply point reinforces the need to create an environment where this information can be accessed and transferred in as accurate and complete a way as possible.

3.3Does the interview itself influence the information gathered from it?

There is considerable evidence to show that it is possible to conduct an interview in such a way as to bias the information gathered or even distort it altogether. The following extract is from the AKRI web site but the original source is "Your Memory: A Users Guide : Alan Baddeley: Penguin. 1993”

In one experiment (Elizabeth Loftus), subjects were asked to watch a film of a car crash. All subjects were than asked the same questions about the crash (About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?) except that the word 'hit' was replaced by one of the words, 'smashed', 'collided', 'bumped', or 'contacted'. Estimates were higher when the word 'smashed' was used (40.8mph) and lowest when the word 'contacted' was used (31.8mph) with the expected range in between. Furthermore, when subjects were questioned a week later about if there was any broken glass, those subjects who were given the word 'smashed' were consistently more likely to report 'yes' than the others. In fact there was no broken glass.

An example of a leading question that could influence memory, or at least the report from memory, is:

Instead of asking, "Did you see a broken headlight", you ask: "Did you see the broken headlight."

When an interviewer feels that he or she knows as much or more than the person being interviewed, there may be a strong tendency for the interviewer to attempt to bias what the interviewee says so that it matches the beliefs of the interviewer. In such cases, the interviewer should remember that the point of the interview is to find out what the interviewee thinks and not what the interviewer thinks.

3.4 What is the role of the interviewer?

The role of the interviewer is simply to manage the realisation of the goals of the interview. This implies that each interview has well defined realistic goals and that the theme that must underpin such goals is the elicitation of information from an interviewee. The interviewer needs to engage fully in the process and concentrate on the task in order to develop a dialogue that will achieve the goals. The interviewer must also manage the process including setting it up, managing the environment, managing the interviewees experience and critically, managing the time available.

3.5 Listening, understanding, translating and verifying

Whilst searching the internet to elicit a feel for the work done on and thoughts about listening, I came across this rather interesting statement:

If I listen, I forget what I am going to say next!

I liked the statement straight away because it seems to embody much of what goes on in peoples heads during meetings and sometimes interviews. Listening is not easy and it requires attention and concentration (very similar qualities). Unless someone is practiced at listening, they will probably not be very effective at it. It is possible to improve attention span with practice. During an interview, the interviewee may find talking about their experience quite easy but the interviewer may need to concentrate hard to pick up important details and follow lines of reasoning. A good interviewer should be a good listener. I have experienced cases where interviewers are more interested in making their own point about what is being said than accurately recording the point being made by the interviewee, hence the relevance of the statement above.

Understanding should follow from good listening but may not do so. It may not be necessary for an interviewer to understand everything that he or she elicits. However, without some understanding it may be difficult for the interviewer to pursue a line of thought and fully explore a topic. Many researchers relate understanding to explanation. This is a useful clue for an interviewer. Try to explain the topic that is being or has been explored. It may be desirable during an interview for the interviewer to explain the topic just discussed back to the interviewee so that the interviewee can comment on whether a correct explanation has been given. Understanding helps an interviewer to manage the full exploration of a topic. The talk back idea also helps the interviewer and interviewee to verify the information captured during the interview.

In some cases an interviewer may need to translate meaning between different experts during different interviews. This may be necessary because the experts may be expert in slightly different parts of the overall topic. Translation is easiest if understanding is present.

3.6 Controlling the interview environment

It was stated in section 3.1 that stress was a critical factor that could affect the outcome of an interview. The environment that an interview is conducted in could have a considerable impact on stress and also on other features of an interview. For instance, if an interview room was very hot and stuffy, this may make interviewer and interviewee very tired and far less alert. Considering the stress element could be helped by thinking about two extremes of interview environment:

A small bare room with one uncomfortable chair in the middle for the interviewee and a very strong light facing the chair.
An open airy large room with large windows overlooking a tree lined lake containing an attractive water feature in the centre. The room contains comfortable yet firm seating round an attractive tidy table.

It is more likely that the interview environment will be something in between the examples given above. However, there are certain factors that can have a significant effect. These factors include, noise, light, humidity and space. One factor not usually attended to is smell. This can put a person off and they may not know why.

The point here is that if a person is responsible for organising interviews then they are also responsible for organising the interview environment.

3.7 Things that a good interviewer should be

It is useful to end a chapter on the personal perspective of interviews by considering what the interviewer should be. The list is provided below for discussion. Should these things all be included? Are there some things missing?

An interviewer should be:

Fully aware of the interview objectives
Able to listen actively and effectively
Alert and prepared to focus
Able to understand the interviewee’s position and feelings
Alert to the interview environment
A good time manager
Able to effectively control an interview progress and direction
Strong enough to remove distractions and to refocus when necessary

4.What does an interviewer need to know?

The issue concerning what an interviewer needs to know in order to have a full knowledge of interviewing will be addressed through the use of a Knowledge Structure Map (KSM). Investigating knowledge areas using Knowledge Structure Maps is a tried and tested methodology that has proven very useful in a broad range of knowledge studies. Initially, a KSM for interviewing will be shown and a brief description of data that is captured along with the structure will be described. This will allow the knowledge area to be considered more objectively by reference to the map and the information that an associated analytical tool ‘KST’ (Knowledge Study Tool) can provide.

4.1 A Knowledge Structure Map for Interviewing

Figure 1 shows the full KSM that has been derived for interviewing. This is a little contrived because it only uses one expert rather than several as the source of information about the knowledge and the full rigour of the methodology has not been used. However, the map should be of some value and will certainly highlight the knowledge area and because it is made clear and explicit, will open the details up for discussion and challenge.

interview map

Figure 1: A complete KSM for the interviewing knowledge area, shown in the tool KST.

Figure 1 is too small to show any detail. It is presented mainly to show the extent of the knowledge area uncovered and the context that the KSM has within the software tool used in its elicitation and analysis (KST – Knowledge Study Tool). The issue addressed by this study was:

What knowledge is needed in order to know how to interview people effectively?

Each box or node on the map represents a particular piece of knowledge. The links connecting boxes show learning dependency. This structure implies that links to knowledge nodes (say C, D and E) below a main node (say A), imply that it is necessary to already understand C, D and E before it is possible to fully understand A. In other words, C, D and E are prerequisite knowledge of the knowledge area A.

Each node or box on the map represents a piece of knowledge. Every knowledge element has a name, a definition and a brief summary of the knowledge.

There are also four parameters associated with each knowledge node. These are given numeric values between 0 and 10 by moving the four sliders show in the lower part of figure 1.

I do not intend to provide more detail here because this topic is discussed in other accessible material.

4.2 Analysing the knowledge needed

The knowledge structure map for Interview contains 94 nodes and 116 links. There are five major sub knowledge areas shown on the map at layer 1 (the second layer down from the top node). The five main knowledge sub areas are:

Interview theory
Interview Objectives
Topic exploration
Record information
Organise interview

Brief explanation of the meaning of each of these can be found in table 1.

The largest knowledge sub area on the map is ‘topic exploration’ (53% of all map knowledge is also part of this area). This knowledge is clearly central to any interview technique because it is the thing that is the active part of achieving the goals of an interview.

Interview theory covers 40% of the knowledge area and is also clearly important here. Many people that carry out interviews may not even consider this knowledge area as something they should know before they carry out interviews. Much of this knowledge area related to theory identifies things that would probably be used only occasionally. The main method identified is ‘questioning methods’ and this has also been identified as very important. It is also 13th in the most risky knowledge table, just outside the top 10% identified in table 3 below.

There are two knowledge areas that are highly integrated with the whole map. These are:

Listen attentively
Describe things

This is interesting because the two areas together describe the dialogue that is an essential feature of interviews. It should be noted however that neither of these knowledge areas is simple. People do have difficulty in listening attentively even though they may deny this. People may not be that good at describing things clearly, unambiguously and concisely which is what this knowledge area calls for.

Node-Name	Size	%Size	Num-Params	Num-Arcs
Interview	94	100	372	116
topic exploration	51	54	200	65
Maintain topic	49	52	192	63
Maintain discussion focus	42	45	164	55
Interview theory	39	41	152	46
Recognise features	33	35	128	71
Summarise	33	35	128	69
Construct logical statements	32	34	124	72
Describe things	32	34	124	72
Grammar	31	33	120	72
Interview methodology	31	33	120	40
Semantics	31	33	120	72
questioning methods	30	32	116	48
estimate similarity	28	30	108	65
recognise redundancy	28	30	108	65
Communicate with others	27	29	104	46
decompose a task	27	29	104	64
Handle conflicting views	27	29	104	36
Organise interview	27	29	104	33
Record information	27	29	104	34
Combat discussion bottlenecks	26	28	100	40
Generalise	26	28	100	55
Listen attentively	26	28	100	52
take notes	26	28	100	33

Table 2: Most centrally connected knowledge

Table 2 provides a list of the knowledge nodes that are most centrally connected on the map. The top values here will be the main knowledge areas since these are connected to most other knowledge nodes. However, the two nodes in question are much lower down the map and therefore cannot have large prerequisite structures. In spite of this, ‘describe things’ at layer 9 of 11 connects to 34% of the map in a pre and post requisite direction and ‘listen attentively’ at layer 7 of 11 connects to 28% of the map. This shows their key role in the knowledge structure.

Node-Name	Importance	Difficulty	Study-Exp	Known-By
Combat discussion bottlenecks	8	8	8	1
Listen attentively	9	8	9	3
Truth	6	9	8	1
Maintain discussion focus	8	7	9	2
see problems in different ways	7	8	8	1
topic exploration	9	8	7	2
Analyse	8	8	6	1
Manage available time	7	7	9	2
Construct logical statements	8	7	7	1
Use alternative perspective	6	8	8	1

Table 3: Knowledge at most RISK

Table 3 shows the top 10% or so of the knowledge from the map in order of highest risk. Risk is computed in a logical way using the parameter values provided by experts. Here, ‘listen attentively’ is one of the highest risk knowledge areas. This combined with other evidence seems to suggest that this knowledge area should be given some serious attention.

Time management is also identified as a knowledge area in the high risk category. From the description of ‘Manage available time’ or time management provided in table 1, it can be seen that this has been defined (table 1) as an active and rather complex piece of knowledge. This knowledge, if it is really known, is often applied poorly. This may be because those that apply the knowledge need to actively take responsibility for the time that an interview or meeting should take and have the strength and conviction to control events that would adversely affect the desired control.

Time management is considered to be one of the most important knowledge areas within the area of interview organisation. This area is not considered to be at high risk in general but does contain some poorly understood knowledge such as that associated with interview stress. Within the context of this work it is not the function of an interview to create stress but to avoid it.

It would really be valid to conclude that each of the knowledge areas from table 3 should be given attention and anyone wishing to improve their ability at interviewing should address these issues. One way could be to think of exercise that would help a person to improve in each area.

Knowing how to summarise can be seen from the map to be one of the most fundamental knowledge areas that influences almost all other major knowledge sub sections. The position of this knowledge on the map shows that it concerns knowing how to summarise rather than being able to do it. However, this knowledge is really essential if a person is to become able to summarise well. The map shows that a complete knowledge of how to listen attentively involves knowing how to summarise. Summary is one of the things that helps a listener to play an active role in the listening process. Passive listening is not usually successful.

4.3 Reviewing interview knowledge

The main point of this chapter has been to introduce the idea of an explicit knowledge structure map to show what things should be known if one is to have a full and comprehensive knowledge of interviewing. Several key knowledge elements have been identified in section 4.2 but more importantly, the section showed how to use the map and data to study the knowledge area of interviewing.

It is certainly acceptable to challenge the map and therefore to challenge what an interviewer should really know. This is one of the main points of developing a KSM, that is, to make the knowledge area so explicit that it can easily be challenged and therefore developed and improved. An interviewer may really want to ask ‘ why do I need to know this’ and the map should help to provide this answer.

Beware when doing this however that the definition for interviewing is clear. Within the context of this work an interview is where information is sought. It is not a place where scenarios are developed or experiments on interviewees should take place. The context here puts the information itself at the centre of the frame and the interviewer(s) and interviewee(s) are part of the attempt to disclose the information in as accurate and comprehensive way as possible, taking the interview objectives into consideration.

Even job interviews can be thought of in this way. The information that is to be uncovered here could be one or more of several things. What does the interviewee know that will enable him or her to do the job? (for instance). Job interviews could be one interview considering several aspects of information or several interviews, each designed to elicit a particular piece of information. One useful thing that can occasionally be missing from job interviews is for the interviewers to fully understand what knowledge the job or post actually requires.

5.Issues that affect interviews

There are several issues that can have an effect on the objectives of an interview that may not relate directly to the process of eliciting information. A few of these issues will be discussed in a little detail to provide a flavour for this topic. In each case the issue will be outlined, what its effect could be, why it should have this effect and how it may be possible to do something about the effect.

5.1 TRUTH: Is the information being gathered correct?

Where it is everyone’s only intention to uncover information concerning the interview topic, then truth will depend on what people believe. Information gathered will be true if the beliefs held by the interviewee are correct. An interviewer should consider the likelihood of eliciting only the truth from interviews from the outset. This likelihood may depend on the experience of the interviewee, on how many interviewees are able to answer the same questions (verification) and on whether the questions have been asked in the correct way.

There are many bother reasons that truth may be sacrificed in an interview. These reasons relate to the motives of those involved. For instance, in a job interview, the interviewee may be strongly motivated to gain employment or promotion. This may mean that the interviewee is prepared to add to the truth about what is said about his or her own capability and experience for instance. In other words they may lie in order to increase the likelihood of achieving their goal.

Truth may also be deliberately sacrificed in situations where other issues such as risk and trust are significant.

5.2 RISK: If I tell you this, how will it affect me?

From the point of view of the interviewee, that person may feel that revealing information may have an effect such as threatening the person’s future employment or promotion prospects etc. This effect is particularly evident in organisations that have a recent history of staff losses through redundancy etc. The effect can be further aggravated when the interviewee feels that the information they are about to reveal is the thing that is also acting as their job security. They may feel that their continued employment or chances of promotion depend on aspects of their knowledge. They may feel that revealing this knowledge makes them more dispensable.

This is really all about whether the interview has a hidden agenda. The purpose of an interview should be clearly stated but it should be realised that if the interview is really threatening to an interviewee then full cooperation cannot be assured. If the situation is really one of capturing knowledge before redundancy for instance then this objective should be stated and some incentive for the interviewee to reveal their knowledge when the objective is clear, should be created. If an organisation is known for things like hidden agendas then it would be difficult to assure cooperation in interviews.

It may not just be the interviewee that has concerns however. The interviewer may be concerned that the very interview process may reveal something to the interviewee that should be kept secret. This may influence the way that the interview is conducted. Any risk of revealing secret information through the normal interview process should be carefully evaluated and possibly an alternative to interviews be carried out, such as a well designed questionnaire.

5.3 Trust: Are people being honest with each other?

Section 5.1 raised the issue of an organisation that is known for its hidden agendas. As well as creating risk, this situation has a serious effect on trust. If interviewer and interviewee cannot trust one another then interview objectives are the likely casualties.

When an interviewee fails to answer a question is it because they don’t know the answer or because they don’t want to revel it? If an interviewee answers a question ambiguously, is this really because they don’t know the answer but don’t want to admit this? The answers to these questions are related to trust and in many cases also to risk.

When an interviewee and interviewer are new to each other, then it may be difficult to established trust between them. Any trust that is established in such circumstances is likely to relate to the context of the interview. For instance if a trustworthy but new interviewer is to interview a person that is already suspicious of the process because of past experience, then this lack of trust will also be applied to the interviewer even before a meeting takes place.

It can be very difficult to re-establish trust in an environment where trust has failed. It may be simpler to make operational plans when it is known that there is no trust. This may mean verifying all information from multiple sources etc.

Trust is an issue at the core of organisational management and attempts to fix significant problems in this area are probably a long way outside of the scope of an interview. However, where there is no underlying mistrust, then encouraging a trusting interviewee / interviewer relationship will help the interview process.

5.4 Leadership: Able to firmly but sympathetically manage and control

An interview, like a meeting, needs someone that will take charge of procedures and processes. It can make a big difference to a meeting or interview if the people there know that there is someone who will protect the environment and manage the resources, particularly time, in an agreed and acceptable way. Often such a person needs to possess qualities of good and strong leadership.

It is certainly not respectful if an interview that was set to last one hour, is left to go on for twice as long or is subject to constant interruption. Interviews in particular demand concentration and interruptions should be managed out of the proceedings before the interview starts and any unexpected interruption should be dealt with firmly and decisively.

Decisive action is often required to control the interview process itself. This may involve managing the time effectively and making decisions as to how to deal with unexpected situations such as the disclosure of completely unexpected information that could lead to prolonged investigation. Decisive management may also be needed to ensure that an interview that is supposed to focus, does this and an interview that is supposed to be well structured, sticks to the structural framework imposed.

5.5Procedure: To make sure things happen correctly.

Procedure is a particular issue where interviews are to be highly structured. Creative and adaptive qualities are often required of an interviewer but where the interviewer is also expected to control the interview, complying with a laid down procedure may also be necessary. It may be felt that creativity and adaptability are in conflict with a requirement to follow procedure in some cases. However, this is something that must be managed well if interviews with such complex requirements are to be successful.

As an example, suppose a well structured interview was floundering because the interviewee seemed to be having difficulty weighting parameters etc. The interviewer may then feel that a card sort exercise may overcome this problem but it is not part of the structured procedure for this interview. In this case, the decision may be to defer the interview until another time and re-plan the new event, taking into account the new situation.

The main point here is that the issues related to procedure and possibly a need for creativity and adaptability need to be known in advance and typical scenarios prepared for.

5.6 Respect & Dignity: The way people should be treated

Each party at an interview (or meeting) should have respect for the others there. This respect means attempting to see the situation from their point of view and not simply proceeding with ones own agenda.

Where interviews or meetings involve differences in seniority it can happen that the dignity of the subordinate may not be respected. Even if the subordinate is perceived to be at fault in some way it is probably counterproductive to humiliate that person in front of others. The situation being discussed is an interview after all and affording respect and dignity is not something that is likely to cause problems to the outcome of the interview. Indeed. It is likely to have a positive influence.

6. Considering specific interview items

This chapter will address a few specific components of interviews. The method will be to discuss the components to show how a decision about each could be arrived at. It is not possible in most cases to simply provide an answer that is always correct. It is important however, to be able to consider issues in the correct way and be able to arrive at appropriate answers for specific instances of a general situation.

6.1 How long should an interview be?

As with many other seemingly simple questions about interviews, it may not be easy to arrive at a simple answer that applies in all situations. For this question it would be useful to initially consider what factors would influence the best length of an interview. These factors themselves may vary depending on the type of interview to be undertaken. For the sake of this discussion I will consider a generic case.

The thing that should not be the controlling factor for the length of an interview is how long is available divided by how many people there are to interview. The things that should affect the length of the interview are:

The interview objectives:
The type of interview and the methodology to be used:
The interviewees (and interviewers) concentration span:
The interview environment:

There are occasions when a 10 minute interview can satisfy objectives but in most cases something between say 30 minutes and 2 hours is appropriate. Less than 30 minutes and there is very little time to address more than one issue or to pursue lines of debate. More than 2 hours and fatigue will become an issue. In many cases the information to be gathered suggests that much longer than two hours is needed. In such cases it is better to plan a series of separate interviews that may be different in nature. For instance, early interviews may be less well focused and only lightly structured but both focus and structure may increase in later interviews as it becomes clearer what specific information is still needed.

6.2 Examples of bad environment

Environments were briefly addressed in section 3.6. The suggestion was that an environment that contained many distractions was not good. It is more than distractions that can contribute to a poor interview environment. Temperature, humidity, draft, light, odour etc are also factors. Therefore a really bad example of an interview environment would be one that was noisy, smelly, wet, windy, dark and generally uncomfortable.

Some would not agree with this however. There is a serious issue concerning interviewing in an environment where the expert actually works. This may indeed be all of the things mentioned but the expert may be able to remember much more relevant detail when actually in the environment where his or her knowledge is applied. Asking the expert to discuss work on a very active building site whilst in a cool clean light and airy interview room, may reveal less than if the interview was conducted on the site in question.

This adds strength to the notion that it is not easy to provide a correct answer that can be applied in all situations. What is important is that the person planning the interview is aware of the options and takes account of the specific requirements and situation in each case.

6.3 Examples of good environment

The preceding section probably makes this comment redundant. However, I have left at least a brief statement in to reinforce the message that an environment should be planned as part of the interview arrangements. In spite of an occasional requirement to conduct interviews in the context of the application of the knowledge that is being investigated, the general message is that the interview environment should be comfortable and free from distractions.

Comfort also has several meanings. An environment where one wishes to relax in comfort may not be the same as an environment where one wishes to work in comfort. One typical difference may be temperature. It a working environment is too warm, this can make people sleepy.

6.4 Interview dysfunction

There are many reasons why an interview may fail to deliver its intended outcomes. In most cases the responsibility for this is with the interviewer or interview organiser. In some cases it can be because the interviewee simply does not have the information that is being sought. In this case, it is the wrong person that is being interviewed so it is back to the interview organiser.

In general, the more interviewers there are, the more organisation is needed. When there is a large panel of interviewers and just one interviewee it is going to be very difficult to get at the right information. The statement presented in section 3.5 (repeated here) could easily apply to members of the interview panel.

If I listen, I forget what I am going to say!

This could mean that the interview does not flow, lines of reason are not followed and the full value of information raised may be lost.

The main cause of dysfunction however is when the interview looses its way. This can often mean that the questioning is getting nowhere and interest in the topic is lost. This can even go unnoticed if someone is not regularly checking interview progress against interview goals. It is possible to refocus an interview when a problem is noticed. This may involve creating a sort of mini break or diversion and then restarting after the goal has been restated and a new sub goal selected.

7. How to improve

In this final brief chapter, I will discuss the main reason for developing this work. That is, how can people become better interviewers?

7.1Make sure you know what you need to know

Since this work has focused on a knowledge based approach, the obvious thing to conclude is that in order to become a better interviewer, a person should know more about interviewing. This is the reason for producing the Knowledge Structure Map. Making the knowledge area of interviewing explicit in this way opens it up to critical challenge and therefore provides greater opportunities for debate within the knowledge area. In particular however, people can consider the map and seek out the information that they currently don’t have. This means that the map can contribute to the growth in knowledge of interviewers. Later the map itself can be refined and improved so that the knowledge associated with interviewing becomes clearer and more accessible.

7.2 Build the issues into your general working life

Several of the knowledge areas from the map can be thought of simply as things to generally get better at. These things will help a person in their everyday working (and even private) life. The knowledge items from the map that could fall into this category are things like ‘listening attentively’, ‘summarising’, ‘describe things’, ‘truth’, ‘evidence’ and most certainly ‘time management’. Many of these things can be improved by becoming more aware of them. For instance, try to improve listening ability by trying out techniques like constantly summarising what is being said or trying to create a story or scene about what is being said. Things like truth and evidence can also be improved by asking (in ones own mind) why something that has been said should be believed. What is the justification for such a belief or how strong is the evidence that supports this belief. It may be best to keep this as a thought exercise since you could very quickly make yourself unpopular by challenging everything that you are told by others. The thought exercise however, may make you wonder why you do believe certain things.

Another useful exercise is to try to descried things or situations that you come across and also to see how much you rely on analogy and metaphor when you do this.

7.3 Watch for topic drift, circularity, irrelevance etc in general meetings

This is a good thing to do but don’t interfere unless you are certain that the interference will be received positively. In casual conversation, much of the information exchanged can be repeated many times and the making of a fairly trivial point can take quite a long time. It sometimes seems that it is the talking rather than the exchange of information that is important. This may be something that is interesting to consider. Investigation can be made more objective if one tries to summarise the main points of information that was exchanged in a conversation and then consider this against the time that it took to reveal the information.

This sort of conversation can even creep into meetings. It can be, particularly with a weak chair person, that considerable meeting time is taken in the discussion of points that are completely irrelevant to the meeting objectives. Taking the effort to actively consider and possibly analyse this could have the spin off benefit that a rather lengthy and boring meeting seems to pass more quickly.

7.4 Understand what interviews are really for

When in a meeting or interview, it is useful to remind oneself not only what the objectives of the particular interview are but in general what you believe the function of an interview is. The argument put forward in this work is that the purpose of an interview is to gather information. If you subscribe to this view then you may wish to use other terms for things that are called interviews but are not really about information gathering explicitly. For instance, in a job (so called) interview when an interviewee is placed in a deliberately stressful environment in order to see how they function in that environment, you may wish to invent a name such as ‘stress performance test’ or ‘situation response test’ rather than ‘interview’ to describe the activity. In such cases it would still be desirable to conduct an interview as defined here.

7.5 Why are stories easier to remember than meeting discussion?

In some interviews, an interviewee may use an amusing story to make a point that is relevant and perhaps an example of the information being sought. It is often the case that the story is remembered by all parties long after the rest of the discussion has been forgotten. (Although hopefully the rest of the information has been recorded.) What is it about a story that creates something that is more memorable than simply stating a point briefly and efficiently? A story is very redundant. It seems to require much more effort to transfer than the making of a simply point. However, the information is often much easier to integrate with ones existing experiences and it is able to become part of what one already knows. It is also the case that the listener is required to create mental scenes when listening to a story and in this way become an active participant. The individual will also need to use their own experiences, memories and knowledge to help them create the imagery. This may mean that the point to be made is actually much richer than the simple statement could have been and it may be possible for the listener to use that point in a much more varied way than would have been possible with the brief statement.

In other words, stories in interviews can be a bonus rather than a distraction. They can often show how information can be used in a broader sense.

7.6 Visualise the end result where interview data is actually used

One effective way to improve interviewing is for the interviewer to visualise the information being used for its eventual purpose even before it has been gathered. Visualisation may be difficult since the nature of the information will not be known in advance. This is not important for a more general visualisation or it may cause the interviewer to create more than one scene, each showing the final situation in different information cases. Visualisation of this sort may help the interviewer to maintain the focus of interviews when they become difficult to manage.

Another way to use visualisation at the start of a project or interview programme is to imagine oneself presenting the results of the project to a team of senior managers. This brings the problems of what conclusions can I draw from this and what recommendations can I make into the active phase of a project. It also means that such questions are less likely to remain unanswered, leaving the project in difficulties.

7.7 The desire to improve

People can get better at interviewing and in general people need to. This will not come about easily and simply through the use of a training course etc. It will only happen if people want to become better at interviewing and if people really start to consider the issues connected to interviewing. People will also find a style that accommodates the things that they learn about interviewing whilst allowing these things to work with their own personality and qualities. Everyone will not interview in the same way but everyone should do it effectively.

Many of the knowledge elements attached to interviewing are the same as those that would improve normal social interaction. These may need to be coupled with qualities of thought and sensitivity and the realisation that it is not always prudent to point out everything that you know to other people. I will leave that thought there because a good interviewer will be a thoughtful person.