Why We Interview & How Knowing This Can Set You Apart

Interviews have the potential to completely change our lives in as short as 10 minutes. Our interview performance directly correlates to unlocking new and exciting opportunities. Mastering the skill of interviewing not only allows us control over our career, but it allows us control over our lives.

The first step to mastering anything is to deeply understand its purpose and basic components. But that said, have you ever taken a second to think about why we even interview in the first place? Why have these nerve-wracking interrogations become a global standard in recruitment?

Humble Beginnings

Although it may seem like interviews have been around since the prehistoric ages, they are still a relatively new development in modern history. A couple hundred years ago, there was no need for interviews. Productive workers would join guilds as apprentices and learn from masters. Everyone looked out for everyone. Then one day, someone decided that America just wasn’t producing enough things.

Tasks began getting divided into smaller and smaller pieces, eliminating the need to master every single tiny step in the process of production. Thus, marking the beginnings of the unskilled worker. People began leaving family work and moving to factory towns to work mindlessly as a piece in an assembly line. Large corporations began forming and looked to optimize every piece of production, including people.

During this shift, one man put in place the beginnings of what is now known as the job interview. You may know him for his other inventions such as the incandescent lightbulb, the phonograph, or any number of his 1093 other patented innovations. That’s right. Another invention that can largely be credited to the work of Thomas Edison is the modern interview.

Despite only attending school for a grand total of 12 weeks, Thomas Edison went against the odds and built his own company, Edison Electric, from scratch. As word of mouth grew of Edison’s genius inventions, so did the number of young professionals itching to work for him.

After firing one too many eager hires, he decided he needed a way to select the best of the best. He dreamt up the “Edison Test” to help him narrow down his pool of candidates and find those that could keep up with his level of ambition. The Edison Test consisted of 146 questions ranging from world history to astronomy and everything in between.

Similarly, the US Army had developed a psychometric test to determine who would make good soldiers, known as the Woodworth Personal Datasheet. This was a set of questions that tests potential soldiers’ ability to withstand immense stress and their ability to work with others.

Although one test helped to select the toughest of soldiers and the other helped select sophisticated innovators, these two tests laid the groundwork for what we now know as the job interview.

Fast forward 100 years and we still see similar questions asked in interviews every day. So it’s clear that the question and answer format has passed the test of time. But does it give the intended results?

But Do They Work?

Interviews can either be structured, where everyone gets the same questions, or unstructured, where there is a more go-with-the-flow rhythm. The effectiveness of both of these forms of interviewing has been studied across cultures for decades. The general conclusion from research shows that interviewing is still one of the most effective methods for hiring the right talent, only falling behind cognitive ability and integrity tests.

Although bias does exist in interviewing, it produces less bias than other methods of recruitment. Interviews also have a low correlation with other complimentary hiring practices such as cognitive tests and personality assessments, allowing for increased effectiveness when using a combination of methods.

Interviews allow hiring managers a brief window to figure out who their candidates really are. It allows them to gauge everything from cultural fit to technical know-how and everything in between. Although it may be terrifying walking into a room for an important interview, it is a valuable process that assists your interviewer in getting to know you better both as a person and as a potential employee.

Try to use this to your advantage. Whether it was Edison attempting to find ambitious young workers (such as Henry Ford or Nikola Tesla) or the hiring manager at your local marketing firm, their motives are the same. They want to achieve their goals and need your help. Go into your interviews with their goals crystal clear in your head, position yourself as the missing piece needed to achieve them.

So now that we have a good idea as to why we interview, it’s time to learn how to master them. Follow along with The Interview Insider to receive exclusive insights on how to develop confidence in your communication and nail any interview thrown at you.