Pfaff & Associates


SELECTPro A Low-Cost System for Intelligent Interviewing by Gary Meyer HR Magazine, April 1998

Interviewing is an integral part of the hiring process, but few companies have scientific approaches to conducting this vital activity. Consequently, interviews can vary widely in how they contribute to selection decisions. With a structured guidance system, such as SELECTPro from Pfaff and Associates of Kalamazoo, Mich., managers can prepare for and conduct interviews that are more reliable, accurate vehicles for matching people to jobs.

WHAT IT DOES

SELECTPro facilitates the production of guides-or "virtual "scripts"-for smooth-flowing, focused and meaningful interviews. The guides contain questions directly related to the skills identified as essential to the open position. The program comes with several prewritten guides, and users can create any number of guides for specific jobs in their organizations by selecting from the built-in library of questions.

SELECTPro is based on the concept that effective interviewing depends on a clear understanding of the knowledge, skills and abilities essential to successful performance of a job. Examples include selling, leadership and presentation skills. The program gives the best results when quality preparatory time is spent defining the key, indispensable job attributes. With that information a SELECTPro user can create an interview guide composed of questions that specifically probe an applicant's credentials in the designated competency categories.

Creating an interview guide is an example of computing at its easiest. The initial screen in the New Guide section displays an alphabetical list of preloaded skill areas. A double-click on any of the chosen skill areas brings up a screen with a selection of questions carefully composed for that job skill category. This question screen is split into two parts. Its top section shows the available questions, and the bottom section shows which questions have been chosen. Clicking on Add selects a question. Next and Back buttons facilitate browsing both the questions-available and questions-selected sections as a user decides upon the desired mix.

A job Info screen is used to enter information about the position: promotional opportunities, affiliated benefits, primary responsibilities, location and other aspects of interest to applicants. These comments will appear on the interview guide in a region devoted to explaining the job.

When printed, the guide provides a comprehensive interview worksheet in outline form with the material necessary for conducting an effective, incisive interview. The guide follows accepted interviewing methodology, with each sequential step highlighted. For some steps, the guide suggests actions or scripts to follow. White space is liberally interspersed for taking notes, recording responses and composing an interview summary.

WHAT I LIKE

SELECTPro's philosophy about interview questions leads to maximum results. The program incorporates questions about actual past performance, because that history is predictive of future performance. The questions demonstrate three good qualities: They are open-ended so that an interviewee must articulate intelligent responses; they delve into a candidate's recent demonstrations of behavior and performance in the desired job's defined skill areas; and they pointedly probe for examples of best and worst performance, actions taken in difficult situations, and the subsequent outcomes. Those qualities allow interviewers to collect substantive, reality-based data for more reliably determining an applicant's job fit.

Two sample questions are representative of SELECTPro's collection:

  • "Give me the best example from the last six months of how your ability to communicate has helped you be more successful.

  • "Tell me about the toughest group you have had to get cooperation from. How did you go about gaining it?"

    This program deserves high marks for its utility and friendliness. Purchasers will realize that it is a handy tool that can help them work smarter on interview-related tasks. No aspect of the program, from installation to printing the finished guide, poses any technical hurdle or confusion.

    WHAT NEEDS IMPROVING

    Many of the questions are exacting, and candidates will be challenged to respond to them well under the pressure and time constraints of an interview. This level of difficulty could result in too many applicants struggling to provide quality answers, which conflicts with the premise that an interview's purpose is to gather accurate, credible data. My recommendation is to dilute the complexity of the more intricate questions.

    SELECTPro has 40 job-skill areas and will be adding a few more, but inevitably some customers will have unique needs. Allowing for creation of five custom skill areas per guide, for which clients can author their own questions, would increase the program's adaptability. A large inventory of preassembled guides would also be helpful. There are abundant possibilities for additional guides for mainstream jobs.

    The program's instruction booklet is exceptionally concise and could be expanded for clarity. For example, instructions should indicate how many lines of text can be keyed into fields such as Position Responsibilities and Benefits Overview. The booklet also should inform users that their choices are limited to the skill areas built into the program, and they cannot change the wording of the supplied questions.

    SELECTPro is an excellent computer aid that enhances the interview's value in the selection process. Its structured guides keep interviewers locked into job-related topics. Using the same guide for interviewing all the candidates for an open position assures consistency and fairness, allowing objective comparisons. The guides also serve as excellent documentation if legal problems with hiring practices should arise. The program can be a key component in establishing sensible company-wide, interviewing standards and can lead to greater success in selection decisions. SELECTPro represents a cost-effective acquisition to help an employer systematize and streamline interviewing.

    Gary Meyer is administrator of HRIS at the University of Cincinnati.