kmayorn’s blog

Focus your final reflection on the following aspects: An overall reflection of what you learned about interviewing. If you feel that there are certain areas you need to improve in terms of interviewing skills (either as an interviewer or as an interviewee), you can mention that too:
Looking back on everything I have learned throughout the course of this semester, I feel that I have learned a great deal about interviewing and the interview process.  I never knew how many different things go into an interview.  For example, the different probing and listening styles.  I guess I always just thought of an interview as being easy and just asking or answering questions.  When really, there needs to be a lot of thought and preparation that needs to be put into an interview.  No matter if you are the interviewer or the interviewee, you need to do some research and be prepared.  

Probing is a very important aspect of the interview.  If the interviewer is not getting the information he or she is looking for when asking questions, they need to probe the interviewer in order to obtain the information they want.  With the many different forms of probing, you should always be able to get the answers you are looking for.  

I have also learned a lot about what you should avoid when being the interviewer.  Question pitfalls are something that need to be avoided.  These can make the interviewee respond with a yes or no answer when you would have liked a more informative answer.  When this happens probing needs to step into place.

Another thing that I learned from this class about interviewing, is that there is criteria that needs to be taken into consideration when choosing an interviewer and an interviewee.  I never would have guessed that this much thought would go into just choosing who to interview or someone choosing to interview me.  From what I learned in class, I now know that this is the case and it is very important in the interview process.

The final things we learned about were the different types of interviews.  For example, survey, recruitment, employment, performance (performance appraisal), persuasive, and counseling interviews.  All of these types of interviews are different in their own ways.  There are specific approaches and techniques used for each of these types of interviews.  There are certain questions to be asked as well as some that need to be left out.  

The areas that I feel I need improvement in are probably being the interviewer.  I think that I would rather just be interviewed because I don’t think I am all that great in coming up with questions to ask the interviewee.  It should be easy to come up with questions to ask someone about something you need to be informed about, however, to me I would much rather just answer the questions.  Also, based off the final interview project, I believe it is very important to be confident when going into an interview as both the interviewer and the interviewee.  Being prepared is the most important thing you can do for yourself before an interview.  Overall, I feel that this class has only improved my interview skills and will be very helpful in the future when I start interviewing for jobs or interviewing others for whatever reason.  

Counceling interviews are much different than many of the other interviews we have learned about.  You have to be much more empathetic and sympathetic.  You also must have extremely good listening skills to be able to really listen and udnerstand what the interviewee is telling you.  You do not want to probe them or use close ended questions because it could make them feel pressured or uneasy.  You need to be very open also.  This will help me if I ever need to interview someone in the future who is having problems or wants advice.  Although you are not supposed to give straigh forward advice or make decisions for them, rather you should ask or make suggestions to them.  These are definitly good things to know if ever needed to conduct a counseling interview.

The persuassive interview is much more difficult than others we have learned about.  We must be able to use all the knowledge we can to get someone to do something.  We have to make something be appealing and worth while or else no one will be persuaded no matter what you say.  With that in mind, these types of interview can be really helpful in persuading someone to work for you if you offer incentives or something of that sort.  You could also mention benefits the job may have.

The appraisal interview article is what I believe was the most helpful in learning about these types of interviews.  It gave us a lot of useful information about being completely prepared and confident going into a job interview.  The most crucial part is the first 20-30 seconds apparently, that makes me very nervous when the time comes for my appraisal.  What we learned will definitly help me in the real world.

The workshop was definitely a good thing to attend because if we didn’t, we would have no idea how to create our dvds when the time comes.  I think the instructors did a good job of walking us through step by step, while we actually did exactly what she was doing so we were not just watching her do it.  This doesn’t have much to do with interviews except that it will make our final projects come to life.

Learning about the employment interviews was one of the more recent things we’ve learned about that is very useful.  It taught us the do’s and dont’s about being both the interviewer and interviewee when either recruiting for jobs or trying to get the job.  Being a student, I need to have a job.  Sometimes it is hard to keep jobs because of classes and activities, so I interview a lot for jobs.  I definitely will use what we learned in the future for job interviews.

Survey interviews are completely different from other interviews.  Some survey interviews are not done face to face like others.  Instead, you could recieve them in the mail, online or through e-mail, and do those on your own time.  No one is sitting there while you complete it to make you nervous or uncomfortable.  Survey interviews can be very helpful in doing research on certain groups or populations.  They are an easy way to get a lot of information quickly.  Compared to more formal interviews, surveys could also be harder to get participants or interviewees to answer them.  Because of this, you need to try and survey a lot of people to be sure you get the information and research you need.  I think survey interviews have both many positive and negative aspects.

Watching our classmates interviews and listening to their critiques was very interesting.  A lot of the interviews when I watched them I wouldn’t have been able to pick out everything they said just from watching the interview once.  Since they critiqued it and watched it multiple times made it a lot easier for us to comprehend and understand things better.  I really liked watching all the interviews, they were very entertaining as well as educational.  They helped us notice things about interviews that maybe we did not notice before.  Also, it allowed us to use our interview skills and helped us for furture assignments and interviews.

This week we learned more about the interview process, specifically how to motivate our interviewees to respond and the advantages and disadvantages of recording and note taking.  I think that taking notes is a really good way to help document what your interviewee’s answers were and to be able to go back and refer to those answers after the interview is over.  The only problem with taking notes is that it is very difficult to write as fast as the person is talking.  Therefore, you most likely will miss things that they’ve said or things they are saying that you can’t pay attention to because you are trying to write everything they’ve already said.  A better way to approach this, would be to bring a recorder.  After they’ve given you permission to record the interview, it is the most efficient and effective way to refer back to the interview after it has ended.  Another thing we learned is the different approaches to interviews; emotional, hostile, not willing to talk, and talkative.  I think the best for both the interviewer and interviewee would be a talkative interview.  It makes everyone more comfortable when you can conversate with each other.

Planning out your interview before you actaully begin, is usually a good idea to do.  There are a lot of things to think about before you interview someone.  You need to select the right person to do both the interviewing (if not yourself) as well as the right interviewee.  Probing interviews imparticular because there is more to  think about.  Once you have selected your interviewee, you need to research the topic you will be interviewing them on because you must understand and know about what it is you are asking them.  I think what we learned about the different steps and approaches to conducting a well thought out and planned interview was very helpful.