Issue: Job Interviews

Issue: Job Interviews
The Independent Thinker--Critical Thinking, Activism, Dissent, Metanoia

"It has been demonstrated that interviewers form an impression of the candidate within the first minute or so and spend the rest of the interview trying to confirm that impression" (Sutherland 27-28).

"Also related to the availability error is the halo effect. If a person has one salient (available) good trait, his other characteristics are likely to be judged by others as better than they really are. Handsome men and women tend to be rated highly on intelligence, athletic prowess, sense of humor and so on" (Sutherland 28).

"One of the most damaging ways in which the halo effect is ignored is the almost universal prevalence of the interview as a means of selection, whether for hospital staff, university students, army officers, the police, civil servants, or whomsoever. I will demonstrate later that the great majority of selection interviews are useless, and may indeed lower the chances of selecting the right candidate. Part of the reason is that halo effect: the interviewers are too influenced by comparatively trivial but salient aspects of the interviewee, which affect their judgement of his or her other characteristics" (Sutherland 30).

Works Cited

Sutherland, Stuart. Irrationality: Why We Don't Think Straight. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Works Cited

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