Applying for a new job can be a nerve-wracking endeavour. Industrial/Organizational psychologist Dr. Nicolas Roulin from St. Mary’s University shares some insights into the process, illuminating the ways companies go about recruiting and the contributions of psychology to that exercise. Madeline Springle is a Ph.D. student at the University of Calgary, and she shares some tips for job-seekers about preparing for that important interview.
Most names in the following article have been lifted directly from the 1998 classic Office Space. The real people are Dr. Nicolas Roulin, a professor of Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychology at Saint Mary’s University, and Madeline Springle, a job interview coach and a Ph.D candidate in I/O psychology at the University of Calgary.
Joanna was dissatisfied with her job. In just five months working there, she had realized how toxic the work environment was, and she realized that continuing to work there would have a detrimental effect on her mind and her soul. People were quitting all around her. Their work was being added to her own, without a raise in salary or so much as an acknowledgement of the increased workload. She knew she had to start exploring new opportunities.
Joanna updated her resumé and started looking on a series of employment sites. Although she felt that most anything would be better than her current workplace, she didn’t want to make the same mistake she had made when she accepted this current job. She was determined to find a company that was not only a good fit for her skills, but one where she could envision herself pursuing a career over the long term.
The first company whose job ad spoke to her was Initech, and they were right up her alley. They were asking for the database management skills she possessed, they were located a reasonable distance from her house, and they offered flexible office hours that would allow her to work from home whenever her kids were under the weather or her wife had to take the car to her own job. She wrote up a cover letter and sent off her application.
At Initech’s head office, HR manager Samir came in after the long weekend and checked his inbox. There were 209 messages, all from people applying for the open position! How on Earth was he going to get through all of these resumés on his own? Ah! He thought. I’m sure artificial intelligence can help here. He quickly pulled up a generative AI program, and plugged in the resumés of the company’s top-performing employees. He then had the program review all 209 resumés that had been sent in, and asked it to choose the top 10.
Although Samir wasn’t aware of it, the AI program had determined that two things, above all others, determined the quality of a Initech employee. Most of the top employees had included their middle names on their resumés. And many of them had been part of their high school bands. Joanna doesn’t play an instrument, and had not considered adding her middle name to anything. No one at Initech ever saw her resumé. Nobody contacted her to let her know they had received it.
Dr. Nicolas Roulin is an I/O psychology expert who was part of the team that conducted the search for the CPA’s new CEO, the team that chose Dr. Lisa Votta-Bleeker after Dr. Karen Cohen’s retirement. He says,
“AI has pros and cons, broadly speaking. If you use the right AI tools, it can make things faster, cheaper, and easier for an organization. In I/O psychology, recruitment often starts with a job analysis. The person in charge of the hiring will want to talk to the people who are currently doing the job, their supervisors, and maybe their subordinates. This is to figure out what exactly the job is about. What makes those employees effective, or less effective? What are the key issues they’re facing in that job? This might involve speaking with five, six, or even ten employees in order to get a good understanding. This can be quite time-consuming. If you use AI in an effective way, and understand how to implement it, you might be able to get similar results without having to speak with as many people.
The problem is that if you’re using the wrong AI, or the AI you’re using is built on very limited information or data, then you can get a situation where it tells you to look for three-named trombone players. If you have a very limited pool of data to train the AI, then it will do nothing more than replicate the biases that currently exist in that pool. If you are feeding in the data from all your employees, and most of them are middle-aged white men who play beer league hockey, then it’s likely your best performers are middle-aged white men who play beer league hockey. With a larger database, for example one of the large language models that are out there, running into a problem like this is a lot less likely.”
Joanna was ghosted by Initech, but she didn’t sit around to wait. She got right back to work and applied to a job with Initrode, which seemed to be looking for someone with her exact skill set. This job posting included a salary, and it was offering 25% more than she was currently earning. This time, she got a reply!
Initrode’s HR specialist Nina wanted Joanna to provide video answers to a series of questions. This next step was a one-way video interview, something Joanna had never heard of before. She was to record herself answering questions, looking at a camera, but there would be no interviewer there. How would you even go about preparing for that? Why would a company want that?
Madeline Springle is a job interview coach who hosts the Master Your Interview YouTube channel. She says companies do these kind of interviews because they mean every candidate gets the same questions, they all have the same amount of time to prepare and respond, and that this is a tactic that helps streamline the process when a company is conducting a high-volume hiring process.
“Companies likely understand how little candidates like these types of interviews, but they’re here to stay and there must be a reason. The purpose of the one-way video interview is to establish the first line of contact. It usually replaces the phone screening that was once the norm. The HR department would call the candidate to ask a series of screening questions and verify a few details. This would always happen during the work day. So would you rather have someone evaluating your video interview at a time when they’re feeling fresh and on their game, or call you when they’re at the end of a long day and this is the only time slot that could work for them?
The one-way video interview is really about deciding ‘should we move this candidate to the next round?’ You’ve submitted your resumé, then you get that video link. It’s a way to show you’re human, you can do the things you said you could do in your cover letter, and are you able to speak clearly about yourself.”
Dr. Roulin adds,
“One of the advantages of an asynchronous video interview is that the applicant can record their interview from any location, and at a time that’s convenient for them. If you have someone who already has a 9-to-5 job, they would previously have to take an afternoon off from that job to attend the interview. Now, they can record it at 10 pm if they like. That flexibility opens more doors to more people who might otherwise not have been able to do an interview in-person.”
Joanna had never talked directly to a camera to record something like this before. She made sure her background was clear, added a little wall hanging that really tied the room together, removed any distractions, and crafted her answers to the questions. She wrote them out and put them on a board just behind her camera, so she could read them and be sure her answers came out with the right wording. It felt robotic, but she guessed that was to be expected.
Nina sent her a kind, but brief email. Initrode had decided to go in a different direction.
Madeline says,
“There is such a fine line between extensively practicing and preparing, versus over-preparing and feeling like a robot when you deliver. In order to not sound overly rehearsed, try creating novelty in your response – something that will keep even you on your toes. At the core of this is adding variation to your interview response. The reason you’re feeling robotic is because you’re not emotionally connecting to your story. You’re saying the words, but you’re not actually present. You’re not actually experiencing it again as you share it. This is very common, especially when you’re feeling nervous. What you want to do is this – right before you answer the ‘tell me a time when you…’ question, jump back into that workplace environment. Think about how you felt at the time. Maybe it was five years ago. Who were you back then? Connecting to a former version of yourself will reconnect you to your story, and help you be less robotic and stiff when answering questions.”
Joanna was undaunted. She tried again, and after a while she received a response from a company called Chotchkie And Associates. Thankfully, they went with an initial phone interview for screening, and soon she was on her way to an in-person interview.
Chotchkie And Associate’s hiring manager Bob Porter was looking for a few specific things when he launched the search for their new Senior Database Administrator. Of course, familiarity with database management was essential. But he also wanted to find someone who would be adept at navigating issues that arose over the course of their employment. Specifically, he was thinking about a recent data breach in their customer files that had a catastrophic effect on the company.
Dr. Roulin says it’s quite common now for organizations to seek specific attributes and competencies in their hiring processes based on their own experience with how that role has been handled previously. They identify the most important aspects of the job, and determine what has allowed previous employees to excel there versus those who have been less successful.
“We often use what we call a ‘critical incidence technique’, where we try to identify specific issues that may arise in the role. We then try to understand what makes, say, Anne very effective at dealing with that critical situation, compared to Michael who is struggling to deal with that same situation. From that process we can try to recruit for the characteristics that fit best with the position.”
Bob Porter had determined what the company wanted in their ideal candidate, and prepared for a series of interviews that would be conducted over the course of two weeks. He brought in his colleague Bob Slydell, the manager who would be directly supervising the successful candidate. Some of the interviews would be conducted in-person, some over Zoom. Although Chotchkie & Associates used Teams internally for virtual meetings, Bob was aware that more applicants would be familiar with, and have access to, the Zoom platform.
As Joanna got in the elevator to head up for her interview, she went over some of her work stories in her head. She was nervous. What if they ask why I’m leaving my current job? Am I going to come across as disgruntled if I express how I am…disgruntled? Will I seem like a potentially disloyal employee if I complain about my current employment? And if I come up with a less abrasive version of why I’m leaving, won’t I be lying in my interview?
Madeline says focusing on red flags (your OWN red flags) is a very common mistake job applicants make when they begin an interview.
“Being focused on the negative – why they might not hire you, why they might not like your answer, isn’t helping you. Even worse, the interviewer can pick up on this negativity. Instead, make sure you focus on your ‘green flags’. Why you are qualified, what you bring to the job, and why you want this position. Your mindset going into an interview matters more than you think, so make sure yours is working for you, and not against you.”
Joanna put her doubts out of her head as best she could, and walked into her meeting with the Bobs confident in her ability to describe her past work experiences. It was all going well, and then Bob Slydell asked that dreaded question. “Why do you want to leave your current job?”
Dr. Roulin has studied the way we make impressions in situations like these. He says that while some of the research into making an impression is on the employer side, a lot more has been done on the side of the applicant.
“Some of the work I’ve done is on a topic called ‘impression management’, which has to do with how you can create a good impression in someone else’s mind. An applicant is asked questions, and their goal is to demonstrate that they have the experience and qualifications to perform the job. A good example of this is what we call the ‘STAR method’. For example, when you’re asked a question about an experience you had at work, you can build your answer based on a structure of the Situation, the Task, the Action, and the Result. If an applicant can tell their story with that structure, they can provide more information to the interviewer, and they can make a better impression.”
Joanna gathered herself, and answered. “I want to work somewhere where I can see myself having a career. When I saw your job posting, it looked like there would be good opportunities for advancement. I went on your LinkedIn feed and I saw that Chotchkie & Associates was celebrating Yom Kippur. It reminded me of a time when I was in college, working for the Student Association. There was a program in place that tried to promote inclusivity by adding elements of other religions to the usual celebrations of Christmas, Easter, or St. Patrick’s Day. It wasn’t really working, because it just jumbled up the event and no one really appreciated a nominal inclusion of other symbols in an event that was clearly not meant for them. I started attending celebrations outside the school, like Diwali, Eid, Nawruz. I learned a lot about those events, connected with people and even some of our students in those communities, and with their help I was able to collaborate with them to create specific, distinct events to celebrate their cultures. By the time I left school, many of those events were well-attended by students of all kinds, and I think it helped to build a sense of community. I got the sense that your company had that same sense of community, and that’s why I applied for this position.”
The Bobs looked at each other and nodded. Just the kind of flair they were hoping to see. Joanna got the job.