The Recruit Selection Interview
| Published date | 01 July 1985 |
| Author | Elizabeth Burbeck |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8505800307 |
| Date | 01 July 1985 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ELIZABETH
BURBECK,
Metropolitan Police.
THE RECRUIT SELECTION
INTERVIEW
The Metropolitan Police Force has always placed heavy reliance on
the interview for selecting new recruits to the Force. Providing
certain minimum criteriaare met (height, eyesight, fitness, minimum
educational standard), the interview is the determining factor for a
candidate's selection.
The
candidates for some
other
jobs
undergo a
more sophisticated selection process, including psychological
testing, the use of assessment centres and so on,
but
at the end of the
day, for most types of employment, the interview is the critical
hurdle. Astudy in 1965 showed
that
only I%of employers hire
people without first interviewing them, although this figure may be
changing.
Because of the
importance
of the interview, agreat deal has been
written on interview techniques
and
journals
such as Vocational
Guidance Quarterly
and
Management Today devote much space to
issues on interviewing.
Training
courses are
run
to teach people how
to interview candidates,
and
much is made of the importance of
acquiring interview skills. Very rarely, however, is the validity
ofthe
interview called into question. The assumption seems to be
that
it is
essential to have good technique; given
that,
then the interview is an
effective method
of
selecting people.
The.issue of recruit selection in the
Metropolitan
Police has been
given increased attention in recent years.
It
was felt
that
the system
where candidates were interviewed by two officers, usually of Chief
Superintendent or Superintendent
rank,
who received no training or
feedback,
and
who were called in to perform selection
duty
on three
or
four
days ayear, was in need
of
some updating. In addition,
Lord
Scarman
indicated
that
he felt
that
the recruit selection system
was inadequate when in 1981 in his
report
on his "Inquiry into the
Brixton Disorders", he recommended
that
"efforts be made to avoid
racially prejudiced people entering the police service" (p. 128). In
response to these
and
other
pressures, certain changes were made in
the selection system
and
aproject has been set up to devise an
effective psychological measure for candidates to the Force.
Evaluation
of
the Recruit Selection Interview -
Most
Important
Attributes
However, no assessment had ever been made of the recruit selection
interview, in which there had been such intuitive confidence and
which
had
been used
and
accepted
without
question for such a long
time.
It
was decided to
conduct
an evaluation of the interview as a
July 1985
233
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