Many companies conduct interviews before making a job offer to someone. This essay will argue that this is not the appropriate way to recruit people because an interview is not a true reflection of a person’s ability and the best method is to give people standardized tests designed to assess on the job performance.
Conducting interviews is not a very effective recruitment method because the interview does not give the interviewee a chance to show how good they really are. The skills tested in interviews, such as the ability to communicate in a friendly manner and being able to answer questions without any assistance are the opposite of those required by many jobs. For example, a skilled computer programmer or lab technician may be socially awkward and used to consulting the internet before answering a question and they would never be able to show how technically proficient they are.
A better way to find new employees would be to test them on things that they will actually be doing on the job. This is more reliable since it tests the specific skills they will use on a day to day basis and not just interview technique. For instance, Facebook gives potential programmers a real program to debug or ask them to hack into their system. Similarly, Google gives anyone hoping to join their business division a real life scenario that some of their executives recently faced and ask the candidate to think of and present a solution.
In conclusion, interviews have limitations because they often test interviewing skills rather than job-related skills and a better test would be to give prospects a challenge that stimulates the real job.