What are the purpose of the interview and the personality test? What are members of the board of interview looking for when they are having an interaction with young candidates? Obviously, they are there to have a close look at the candidate and to whether he would fit himself into the mould in which he offers himself to be cast. They are there to select persons whose breeding and education have endowed them with the physical and mental qualities that may be needed in good administrator.
Members of the board have before them the record of the candidate’s academic achievements and his performance in the written test. Even so, sometimes it so happens that candidates who are very highly qualified and have done exceptionally well in the written test is rejected. Selectors will surely pass over a candidate whose responses betray any of the following types of failings:
Lack Of Spirit Of Co-Operation
Some people are born loners. They just cannot fit into a team because they are incapable of taking their place in a team got together for the joint effort. They may not be necessarily selfish but they lack the attitude that makes teamwork possible. Such person may also be rejected.
A Pessimistic Outlook
In the same category, lies the person who has a negative outlook on
life and they are somehow always fearing the worst. The presence of such a person in an office can only help to lower the morale of other people working with him and also inject the virus of gloom in the atmosphere.
The Manipulative Type
There are some young people who unfortunately for them try to bluff their way through the interview. This betrays scant regard for truth and lack of personal integrity which is looked upon as a very serious failing. Members are seasoned people and are quick to see through such quite.
Lack Of Tidiness
This can be evident from a candidate’s bearings and clothes. A person with a faulty posture, sloppy bearing, and ill-fitting clothes is likely to be
rejected even before the interview has commenced because these
things show laziness which may also include a lack of mental
alertness and inefficiency in general.
Cynical Approach
A candidate whom the buffetings of life have turned into the sort of person who is always feeling dissatisfied about one thing or the other and constantly grumbling is destined to fail, because such a person, wherever he or she happens to be, is likely to spread disaffection.
Inability To Stand Unto Criticism
Then there is bad looser. You point out a mistake he has made, and he has a red face. You criticise something he has said and he begins feeling hot under the collar. Such over-sensitivity is a sign of immaturity which brings a big minus point in a personality test.
Influence-Peddling
This list of failings which can be the undoing of a candidate in an interview and personality test will be in-completed without including the influence-peddler. He is a man who is given to name- dropping and would not let go the slightest opportunity of boasting about his or his dad’s connections. Such a person is looked upon as selfish. He is usually a potential empire-builder who once he is allowed to get in, may work to build cliques and thus subvert the sense of unity and co-operation among his subordinates. The selectors are particularly wary of that type also.
How Such Candidates Are Filtered Or Rejected?
It is the business of the interview board to weed out the person showing the above mentioned or other negative traits. But how does it manage to do that? That brings us to the technique of interview. The interview is basically in the nature of a friendly talk which looks more spontaneous but is punctuated with well-direction, questions, designed to bring out the candidates mental attitudes and way for thinking.
The interviewers can hope to unveil the personality of the candidate only when the latter is at ease. A majority of the candidates approach the board with feelings of anxiety and apprehension. In that state of mind, they come with their guard up. As long as a candidate is on edge, members of the board have little chance of piercing the protective shell into which he recedes as soon as he comes face to face with them. Therefore, their first task is to put him at ease to such an extent that he drops his guard and they can see him for the sort of person he actually is.
To be able to do that they have to be reassuring and even friendly in the beginning but their approach may be quite the reverse in the case of a candidate who looks over-confident and puffed up. In such a case they may even resort to some leg-pulling to bring the candidate down to earth from his high perch. From this, it should be evident that the first thing that the board tries to do is to make the candidate feel and act natural.
Some of the areas which the interview and personality test are meant to explore are:
1. The General impression which the appearance and bearing of the candidate convey.
2. His mental alertness and grasp.
3. His capacity and ability to think clearly.
4. His powers of judgement.
5. His general social outlook.
6. His ability to anticipate and improve.
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Jai Hind
