Interviewing: An Open College Course

120 Pages·1988·12.612 MB·English

by  Business and Technical Education Council (auth.)

INTERVIEWING
An Open College Course
MACMILLAN The Open College
PW 0601/01
Interviewing
Development Team: Lynn Earnshaw, Derek Ormerod, Paul Tarplett
Video Production: Melanie Davis, David Wilson and Chris Jelley, Yorkshire TV
Acknowledgements
Stills on pages 23,32,39,46,49,56,57,58,59,69,76, 77,80,81,83,87,98, 101,
© copyright Yorkshire Television Limited 1988
The Open College
101 Wigmore Street
London
W1H9AA
First Published 1988
Based on and incorporating material from Working With People© Crown copyright 1987.
This edition and new material © The Open College Limited 1988.
Working With People was produced by the Business and Technician Education Council under an Open
Tech contract with the Manpower Services Commission. The views expressed are those of the authors,
and do not necessarily reflect those of the MSC, or any other Government Department.
All rights reserved. This publication is not part of the Copyright Licensing Scheme run by the Copyright
Licensing Agency and m~y not be photocopied, or mechanically copied in any other way, without written
permission from the publisher.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission
or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal
prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Packaged by
MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 2XS
and London
Typeset and designed by Type Generation, London ECl
ISBN 978-1-349-80978-3 ISBN 978-1-349-80976-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1 007/978-1-349-80976-9
Part number PW 0601 /01
Contents
page
Preface
1 Introduction 7
2 The Role of Interviewing 14
Introduction; Preparing for an Interview; The Interview; The Follow-up
FIRST PROGRESS TEST
3 The Interviewer's Skills 28
The First Step-Eliminating Prejudice; Communication Skills
4 The Selection Interview 41
Introduction; Preparing for the Selection Interview; Managing the
Selection Interview
SECOND PROGRESS TEST
5 counsellln~ Interviews 61
Introduction; T e Problem-Solving Process; When to Counsel; Your
Counselling Style; The Counselling Interview
6 Grievance and Disciplinary Interviews 79
A Problem-Solving Approach; Grievance and Disciplinary Interviews;
Disciplinary Procedures
7 A~pralsallntervlewlng 90
W at is Appraisal? Preparation for Appraisal; Using Rating Scales;
Managing the Appraisal Interview
THIRD PROGRESS TEST
Appendix 104
Answers to Activities 110
Answers to Progress Tests 117
Objectives
After working through this Workbook, you will be able to:
o
explain what an interview is, and identify some of the major types of interview
used in the workplace;
o
explain the part played by interviews in management;
o
describe the main stages in the interviewing process;
o
identify the three main components of an interview;
o
plan and organise to carry out each stage effectively;
o
describe some of the most important interviewing skills, and use them
effectively;
o
explain why selection interviewing is important;
o
prepare for and conduct successful selection interviews;
o
know how to use a problem-solving approach;
o
identify occasions when it is appropriate to counsel;
o
identify your own counselling style;
o
use counselling skills to carry out an effective counselling interview;
o
state the difference between grievance and disciplinary interviews, and
describe the function of each;
o
carry out grievance and disciplinary interviews effectively;
o
explain how effective appraisal interviewing can benefit an organisation;
o
describe some of the pitfalls of appraisal interviewing, and organise and carry
out an appraisal interview.
Preface
This Workbook, Interviewing, is designed to be used as part of a course of
study with The Open College. If you are new to open learning and to The
Open College you may find it helpful, as a first step, to read through Open
Plan. This booklet explains how The Open College operates and what
services it offers. It also provides useful guidance and advice on how to
manage and plan your learning in order to get the most out of your course.
We hope that your learning will be successful, that you enjoy it and that you
find the course rewarding.
You will find it helpful, although not essential, to have access to a radio,
television, audio and video recorder for some of the Activities. You may also
want to watch the YTV/Channel 4 series which complements this course.
Details of when the programmes will be broadcast will be available from
your open access centre.
The exercises
As you work through the Workbook, you wi II meet exercises of various
types. These are called either Activities or Progress Tests. Both sorts are
important, but they have different functions in your learning.
The Activities are closely linked with the text and illustrations. They are for
you to complete as you read the Workbook. There are three different types of
Activity, which are shown by the following symbols:
* is for practical activities, which aim to help you learn by doing
something. Many of these activities are included to help you
practice important skills.
f
indicates a reflective activity, in which you are asked to think
~
about, or reflect upon, an important point. There are no specific
answers to these Activities - they are intended to get you thinking
about what you are reading.
1
is used to indicate a written activity. Again, there are no right or
wrong answers, but for these we suggest some possible answers. If
yours are different from ours, try to work out why this is so, but
don't worry. Your answers may be better than ours!
It is important that you try to complete all these Activities. Each one is there
for a purpose - to help you learn about the subject you are studying. If you
have any problems, you should contact your tutor, who will be able to help
you sort them out.
You will also meet three Progress Tests, indicated by the symbol
CV
These are a different sort of exercise. They are intended as breaks in your
study which will allow you to check how you are getting on. You will find
more explanation on how to use them when you come to them.
Throughout the text, we have included checklists, indicated by the
symbol ~ These are designed to give you a practical guide to
~ interviewing, and you will find it helpful to keep copies
of these with you after you have completed the course.
5
Qualification
Interviewing has been designed to lead to a BTEC Certificate of Achievement
(112 Unit) and the assignments contained in the Assignment Booklet may form
the basis of the BTEC assessment. If you would like your learning to be
recognised by the award of the BTEC certificate, you will need to follow the
course with support from an Open College tutor and to complete the two
tutor assignments to a standard considered satisfactory by your tutor. There
will be no formal examination.
If you are interested in obtaining the BTEC Certificate of Achievement, we
suggest that you talk to your tutor before you start work on the course. He or
she will be able to tell you exactly what is involved and to help you make the
necessary arrangements.
6
1 Introduction
After working through this chapter you will be able to explain what
an interview is, and identify some of the major types of interview
used in the workplace.
Most people taking this cQurse will have been interviewed at some time in
their lives. This may have been a selection interview of some sort-perhaps
for a college place, or a job vacancy, or it may have been for a quite different
reason.
When thinking about the interviews you have had in the past, your memories
may not always be happy ones. This is not necessarily because you didn't get
the job, or the place at college, but becase you felt that you hadn't been
allowed by the interviewer to do yourself justice, to get across the points that
you felt were important.
" ... not allowed to get across the points you felt were important"
As a manager or supervisor, you will now be asked to conduct interviews
yourself, and you will want to make your interviewing as effective as
possible. You may work in an organisation where much of the interviewing is
handled by the personnel department, who are, of course, trained to do this.
However, there will be occasions when you have to carry out interviews
yourself.
In this Workbook and the associated video, we will be looking at some of the
types of interview you may be asked to carry out at work, at how they should
be used, atthe skills required, and at how you can develop these skills to
become a more effective interviewer.
A good way to start is to think about your own experience of interviews, and
in this introduction, we will be asking you to think about some of the
occasions on which you have been interviewed, and to try to identify ways in
which the interview might have been better conducted.
7
ACTIVITY Make a list of some of the interviews in which you have been involved
outside the workplace. If you cannot think of any, try thinking of some! in
1
which other people - perhaps members of your family - might have been
involved.
~f
5-10 mins
Your answers to Activity 1 will, of course, depend on your own job, lifestyle,
or those of the other people you were thinking of. You might have suggested
market research interviews - perhaps you were stopped in the street by a
person with a clipboard, who asked you a series of very specific questions
about a particular product, or maybe you were invited to join in a market
research discussion, where a group of consumers were asked more general
questions about their views on a product or service.
There are lots of other possibilities - an interview at school to discuss the
progress of your child, an interview with the police after witnessing a crime
or an accident, or an interview with a reporter after winning the prize for the
best petunias at the local flower show, or scoring a hat-trick on the sports
field.
ACTIVITY In this Activity we have taken three possible interviews and arranged them in
a table. Try filling in the blanks in the table with your ideas about the purpose
2
of each interview, and some of the questions that might have been asked.
1
10 mins
Situation Typical questions Reasons for interview
from interviewer Interviewer Interviewee
A TV interviewer To gain
questions a man publicity
who has sai led
round the world To earn
in a barrel money
8
A shop manager To selectthe
interviews an 'best'
applicant for a candidate
job as shop
assistant
Your bank manager Have you any
interviews you life insurance?
about an
application for
a loan
There are many answers you could have given to the above activity. We have
made some suggestions in the table given in the answers on page 110.
Looking at your answers and our answers together, you should be able to see
that each of these very different types of interview had two important features
in common.
In each case, both the interviewer and the interviewee had their own clear
purpose or objective for the interview, and in each case, questions were
asked to discover information which would help to reach that objective.
The second two interviews are, however, different from the first. In both of
these the interviewer's objective involved making a decision - in the first
case whether to appoint the shop assistant, in the second whether you got
your overdraft or bank loan.
Making decisions is at the heart of the management process, and one of the
things we will do in this Workbook is to look at how managers and
supervisors can use interviews to help them make decisions.
Each of the types of interview dealt with in this Workbook makes slightly
different demands on the interviewer, but they have many things in common.
We know two of these already. Each one should have an objective, and each
will involve the use of questions to find out information.
ACTIVITY Here is a list of typical occasions on which people meet at work - but not all
of them are interviews. Put a tick against those that you think are interviews,
3
then in the space below, write two or three sentences explaining what makes
the interviews 'different' from the other situations.
1
INTERVIEW?
A shop steward meets a departmental manager to talk about
10 mins production targets.
2 A worker who has been persistently late meets his manager at
the latter's req uest.
3 Two machinists meet at morning break and discuss what they
did at the weekend.
4 The works manager meets departmental heads in one of a
series of get-togethers to discuss changes in working hours.
5 The loading bay foreman asks the despatch clerk to find out
when the next consignment of goods will arrive.
9