Rethinking Interviewing and Personnel Selection

When applying for a job almost everyone is interviewed as part of the selection process . In many cases the process and outcome has influenced what we do, where we work, what we earn, how we are viewed by others and how we regard ourselves. For such reasons it is not surprising that there is a vast literature on personnel selection and how to interview. The case studies in Rethinking Interviewing and Personnel Selection find support for Herriot (1993, 2003) and Fletcher's (1997, 2003) claims that the selection interview is a social process which may gain from a degree of semi-structured interaction with candidates. The book does not deny the case for structured selection procedures. In line with normative selection theory it recognises that there is a strong case for them, such as pre-screening of candidates, tests of abilities and skills, psychometric assessment of personality and concern as much as possible to give candidates 'the same interview'. In this groundbreaking new book the author counters the claim that intuition is less reliable than premise dependent reasoning. She goes on to suggest that it may be necessary for a final integrating judgement on what otherwise may be conflicting attributes of candidates.

Teresa Carla Oliveira is director of the Coimbra Centre for Innovative Management and a member of the Centre for Health Studies and Research in the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra where she teaches and directs programmes in organisational psychology and management. After qualifying for university in science she took her undergraduate degree in psychology and a master's in educational psychology at Coimbra, before gaining a doctorate in organisational psychology at the University of London. She has researched in the areas of leadership, human resource management, psychological contract and performance management. She currently is addressing such issues in research on the scope and limits of government reforms of health services and of the judiciary, as well as in management of small and medium enterprise.

1. What Selection Theory Claims
2. Who Knows for a Fact?
3. Yet How Do We Know?
4. Where's the Logic?
5. What's the Proof?
6. So Why Dismiss Intuition? 
7. Interviewing and Psychological Contract
8. Tacit Knowledge and Implicit Learning
9. Rethinking Selection Theory
10. What Managers Have in Mind 
11. Power Dynamics and Selection
12. So Where Now?
Annex Sets-Within-Sets of Criteria in Panel Interviewing