Describe the different types of interviews, some problems encountered in interviewing, and the characteristics of an effective interview.

Describe the different types of interviews, some problems encountered in interviewing, and the characteristics of an effective interview.

Some different types of interviews that are commonly held in workplaces include telephone interviews, remote face-to-face interviews over programs such as Skype, formal face-to-face interviews about a specific position, informal information-gathering interviews between parties that are not bound to make a specific decision, and panel interviews that involve an interview between a prospective employee, for example, and a group of people who evaluate that person, as opposed to a one-on-one interview. Employers often use rounds of interviews to select candidates, meaning that a successful candidate will have several different interviews with different focuses and different interviewers. From the employer’s perspective, common interview problems include different questions being asked to different candidates, making it hard to compare them, questions and decisions being based on immediate, short-term company needs instead of long-term needs, and bias or prejudice against certain interviewees. An effective interview is an interview between an unbiased, prepared interviewer who knows what the company wants and a candidate who has prepared for the interview by practicing and anticipating interview questions.