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Interview Types and Techniques 21

Employment Interviews

Employment interviews may take several forms. If your job search tales
you to many interviews, you are likely to encounter more than one
interview format. Employment formats may be best divided into two
major categories - screening interviews and hirindplacement interviews.

Screening Interviews

Screening interviews may tale place over the telephone or in a face-to-
face setting. Face-to-face screening interviews are usually held somewhere
other than the employer’s offices. In a college setting, on-campus inter-
views may be held in conjunction with the career services office or at a
campus career fair. Screening interviews may be a part of the activities
involved with a job fair held in a hotel or other neutral place and in which
many potential employers tale part. Not limited to private industry, job
fairs are also held by government agencies and nonprofit organizations.
Most face-to-face screening interviews are also one-on-one - one
applicant talking with one hiring official. However, some organizations
that are deluged with applications for certain positions, such as the
airlines for flight attendants, may bring 20-30 people together at one
time. In this situation the employer is able to screen far more people in
less time than if they scheduled them each for individual interviews.
Those applicants who are screened “in” as a result of the group
screening interview are invited back for an individual hiring interview.
Screening interviews, as the name implies, provide employers the
opportunity to male initial decisions as to whether they want to further
interview an applicant. It helps them narrow the field of applicants to a
more manageable number for conducting formal face-to-face job inter-
views. In other words, applicants are screened “in” or “out” of further
consideration. Job offers are seldom an immediate result of a screening
interview.
Telephone screening interviews are one of the least understood inter-
view formats. Because many applicants are unprepared or do not under-
stand the purpose of this format, they do poorly. Many employers use
telephone interviews these days. Such interviews are more time efficient
and cost effective in eliminating a large number of applicants than face-to-
face interviews. While the telephone interview may tale only five to ten