Which of the following are advantages of using structured questionnaires for job analysis?

The center of a fair and effective hiring process

During her tenure as CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer personally reviewed each new hire. While this might seem like an admirable approach to ensuring cultural alignment, consider the significant amount of time this policy required (Yahoo had 12,300 employees at that time). Yahoo could have reduced time to hire and increased confidence in hiring decisions by incorporating structured interviews in their hiring process. Structured interviews and pre-employment assessments can provide leadership with greater confidence in hiring decisions, yielding a more efficient, effective, and time-saving process.

A structured interview is a standardized method of evaluating job candidates with pre-set questions focused on the knowledge, skills, and characteristics required for the job. Asking the same questions across all candidates, and using a standardized method for scoring responses, can ensure hiring decisions are based on job-relevant information, and not on irrelevant details.

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The four powerful advantages to using structured interviews you should know:

• Effectiveness. One structured interview can provide the same amount of accurate information as four unstructured interviews – making your hiring process not only more accurate, but more efficient. To increase accuracy even further, we recommend including more raters or using a panel interview format.
• Consistency. All candidates are treated the same. Because decision-makers have the same information for every candidate, comparisons can be made quickly in terms of candidates’ potential for success if hired, further streamlining the decision making process and improving confidence in those decisions.
• Fairness. All candidates are treated objectively because questions are based on job requirements. This also makes it easier for candidates to see the link between what they are being evaluated on and the job, improving the candidate experience.
• Legal protection. Because structured interviews predict performance better than unstructured, and provide more detailed job-related documentation, they are markedly more defensible in court. In a recent case review, only 13 percent of structured interviews were found discriminatory, but half of unstructured interview cases received the same ruling.

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Structured interview questions can take many forms. Candidates can be asked to respond to situations encountered on the job, or describe past experiences that measure essential abilities and characteristics. Interviewers might use a behavioral checklist to measure how well candidate responses overlap with core competencies. For a dynamic company like Yahoo, structured interviews might reflect future needs and goals, as well as include core job requirements.

What is your experience with interview practices?  How do you assess future performance with interviewing, while maintaining a positive candidate experience?  We’d welcome the chance to connect and learn from your challenges and successes.

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Though job analysis plays a vital role in all other human related activities but every process that has human interventions also suffers from some limitations. The process of job analysis also has its own constraints. So, let us discuss the advantages and disadvantages of job analysis process at length.

Advantages of Job Analysis

• Provides First Hand Job-Related Information: The job analysis process provides with valuable job-related data that helps managers and job analyst the duties and responsibilities of a particular job, risks and hazards involved in it, skills and abilities required to perform the job and other related info.
• Helps in Creating Right Job-Employee Fit: This is one of the most crucial management activities. Filling the right person in a right job vacancy is a test of skills, understanding and competencies of HR managers. Job Analysis helps them understand what type of employee will be suitable to deliver a specific job successfully.
• Helps in Establishing Effective Hiring Practices: Who is to be filled where and when? Who to target and how for a specific job opening? Job analysis process gives answers to all these questions and helps managers in creating, establishing and maintaining effective hiring practices.
• Guides through Performance Evaluation and Appraisal Processes: Job Analysis helps managers evaluating the performance of employees by comparing the standard or desired output with delivered or actual output. On these bases, they appraise their performances. The process helps in deciding whom to promote and when. It also guides managers in understanding the skill gaps so that right person can be fit at that particular place in order to get desired output.
• Helps in Analyzing Training & Development Needs: The process of job analysis gives answer to following questions:
• Who to impart training
• When to impart training
• What should be the content of training
• What should be the type of training: behavioral or technical
• Who will conduct training
• Helps in Deciding Compensation Package for a Specific Job: A genuine and unbiased process of job analysis helps managers in determining the appropriate compensation package and benefits and allowances for a particular job. This is done on the basis of responsibilities and hazards involved in a job.

Disadvantages of Job Analysis

• Time Consuming: The biggest disadvantage of Job Analysis process is that it is very time consuming. It is a major limitation especially when jobs change frequently.
• Involves Personal Biasness: If the observer or job analyst is an employee of the same organization, the process may involve his or her personal likes and dislikes. This is a major hindrance in collecting genuine and accurate data.
• Source of Data is Extremely Small: Because of small sample size, the source of collecting data is extremely small. Therefore, information collected from few individuals needs to be standardized.
• Involves Lots of Human Efforts: The process involves lots of human efforts. As every job carries different information and there is no set pattern, customized information is to be collected for different jobs. The process needs to be conducted separately for collecting and recording job-related data.
• Job Analyst May Not Possess Appropriate Skills: If job analyst is not aware of the objective of job analysis process or does not possess appropriate skills to conduct the process, it is a sheer wastage of company’s resources. He or she needs to be trained in order to get authentic data.
• Mental Abilities Can not be Directly Observed: Last but not the least, mental abilities such as intellect, emotional characteristics, knowledge, aptitude, psychic and endurance are intangible things that can not be observed or measured directly. People act differently in different situations. Therefore, general standards can not be set for mental abilities.

Authorship/Referencing - About the Author(s)

The article is Written By “Prachi Juneja” and Reviewed By Management Study Guide Content Team. MSG Content Team comprises experienced Faculty Member, Professionals and Subject Matter Experts. We are a ISO 2001:2015 Certified Education Provider. To Know more, click on About Us. The use of this material is free for learning and education purpose. Please reference authorship of content used, including link(s) to ManagementStudyGuide.com and the content page url.

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