Interviews...

Any situation in which a group of people or one person has to choose between another group for a winner, a leader, an employee, is fraught with problems.

The first of these is personal prejudice. Even though the criteria might be a set of skills, and that it may be very clear that a certain person among the selectees meets those criteria better than any of the others, prejudice may kick in and, if the person among the selectors is powerful enough, their prejudice may decide the selection.

Another is the criteria used to select - are people really aware of the skills needed? Do they know how to measure those skills?

The final problem I see is that random factors may influence the process - a person may be well qulified, personable and ideally suited, but arrives late due to a subway drivers strike, or reports to the wrong office, or has received outdated information about what to bring to the interview.

These musings follow on the treatment my daughter received at a university she applied to. She was approached by a professor from the university, and invited to attend an interview. She then received instructions about what to prepare, that were superseded a mere 24 hours before the interview, and which she ignored since she had been given the instructions at the university offices and thought these new instructions to be unrealistic (they involved getting hold of a textbook!). She was also told she would have 15 minutes to teach a demo lesson, which was cut to 5 minutes, during which she was interrupted a number of times.

Needless to say, she did not get the job. This, even though, based on the skill set required according to the advert, she was the best for the job!