Stress interview
| Stress interview |
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Stress interview is a type of interview that is performed in emotionally charged setting in order to evaluate how the interviewee performs under pressure and other stress conditions.
Reason of stress interviewing
Employers want to check candidate behavior in difficult situations, which could happened during work. Interviewing in this way is intended to ensure that candidate have predispositions to take up a the position, which demand standing with difficult situations. It is very important to stay calm during interview of this kind. There are many controversial about stress interview due to difficult atmosphere between recruiter and applicant. (A. Doyle, 2018)
Examples of stress interview methods
Stress interview can be created in different ways, e.g. (A. Doyle, 2018):
- organize interviews in series and let all candidates meet in waiting room – gives opportunity to check how patient candidate is and how stands with weariness and uncertainty. Waiting for their turn also increase level of physical burden,
- organize interview with all candidates at once, in order to create nervous atmosphere of competition. Every candidate want to be better than others, what increase level of stress and may causes conflict situations,
- interviewer who behaves in uninterested manner, doing other things during the interview (calling, reading), in order to check candidate attitude in case being ignored or offended – situations which could happened on positions like teacher or client service consultant,
- hostile interviewer, testing candidate reactions on contact with difficult, nervous people
- doing other things during the interview (calling, reading), in order to check candidate attitude in case being ignored,
- asking stressing questions for example, regarding to the previous job and suggesting that problems in it was reason to apply for new one.
Important rules for stress interview participants
According Alison Dayle article, wanting to be successful in this kind of interview, it is important to behave in a specific way. Examples of good practices are (A. Doyle, 2018):
- do not vacillate to ask for clarification if question from recruiter side is unclear,
- request for as many information's as possible, before answering a question,
- keep in mind that there are no wrong answers. Way of answering, method of standing with problems are most important things, which recruiter wants to check,
- when answer demand to telling a story, candidate should show yourself from the best side, demonstrating that their skills and personality matches with job requirements.
- understanding the reason of interview, takes it as part of process is really important to reduce stress level and in consequence makes it easier to succeed.
References
- A. Doyle (2018) Stress Interview – Tactics to handle pressure The Balance Careers
- Chuang, A., & Sackett, P. R. (2005). The perceived importance of person-job fit and person-organization fit between and within interview stages. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 33(3), 209-226.
- Duggin, S. H. (2003). Internal corporate investigations: Legal ethics, professionalism and the employee interview. Colum. Bus. L. Rev., 859.
- Lammers, J., Dubois, D., Rucker, D. D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2013). Power gets the job: Priming power improves interview outcomes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(4), 776-779.
- Lewinsohn, P. M., Rohde, P., & Gau, J. M. (2003). Comparability of self-report checklist and interview data in the assessment of stressful life events in young adults. Psychological reports, 93(2), 459-471.
Author: Artur Kopera
