Here are another couple of questions  asked Angela Wakenshaw @ Munich Re

Do you believe in interviews?

I’m a huge believer in interviews, but they have to be tabled in the right format. When we interview, the first thing we do is say, “come on in and have a seat”; then we say, “you’ve got the position description, you’ve seen the ad for the job, so let’s talk about the role and just give you some context and then we’ll ask you some questions.”

Interviews are about saying this is what we want, this is what we are about and this is what we expect. Then the candidate can consider whether they are genuinely interested in the job, if this is the right job for them and be open and honest if they’re not interested. If we don’t go through that process, then people who are already nervous become even more nervous, because they feel they are under a spotlight and facing an interrogation. In the end the interview is a two-way discussion.

Are psychometric tests valuable?

I’ve been trained in some of the tests available in the market, but if you don’t have context in the business, if you cannot compare results against people in the business who are already benchmarked, then you need to question the information are you getting. You are getting stand-alone information, which may or may not be relevant in your work environment. If you can use testing to help position somebody in the business, help identify their strengths and weaknesses, then it can be really valuable.
If you use testing to make a decision whether to hire somebody, or if that’s a make or break in the hiring process, then it can be very dangerous. I think with tests such as the ‘Occupational Personality Questionnaire’, different people can come up with different interpretations. That’s what really makes me wary. You need to be really careful about where that information goes, how it is used and what information is actually gathered. We don’t use tests in our business currently, because we don’t have any benchmarks. That information may be useful for me from a HR perspective, but to release some of that information to other people in the recruitment
process would probably be futile and potentially destructive.

See you next post,

James E

James Evangelidis

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Tagged as: Angela Wakenshaw, interviews, Reinsurance