APTMetrics, Westport, Connecticut, United States: Interviewer Experience Standardizes Authentic Interviews with Realistic Simulation

Written answers to the questions

IE was updated and revamped on Mar 9, 2024.

Total 350 words used.

Interviewer Experience is a self-guided web-based multimedia simulation where participants “sit in” on different interviewing situations, answer questions about the process, and discover where a particular path of questioning can lead. If the results of the participant’s choices are deemed incorrect, they are provided immediate feedback and have the option to re-take a module and choose a different path to fully understand the how and why of the recommended actions. This is in clear contrast to many traditional interview training options that offer simple factual presentations and artificial role playing.

In the Interviewer Experience, the participant takes on the role of Riley Garcia, the newly hired Senior VP of Strategy and Operations. In both the Officer and Manager versions, Riley will be leading a team of high-performing employees who solve some of the most difficult challenges facing the organization, but the team has some open positions that need to be filled. While the roles for both versions are fictitious, the context can be branding specifically for a client organization, or a fictitious organization, Palladium, can be used. "Riley" will attend a series of meetings, receive a variety of videos, emails, text messages and other resources to help make decisions, participate in remote and in-person interviews, and will receive immediate feedback and a development report on his decisions.

The immersion allows participants to engage in simulated hiring decisions and tests their learning throughout the exercise, leading to higher quality real-world hiring decisions with measurable reductions in biased outcomes.

The solution transforms traditionally biased interviewing and hiring practices by providing an effective, engaging way for participants to gain realistic experience applying structured interviewing techniques. Interviewer Experience trains hiring managers on how to conduct predictive and unbiased structured interviews.

In traditional training, listening to speakers present slides and watching role-play videos can be informative, but doesn’t truly provide a realistic experience. With the Interviewer Experience, instead of just delivering “training content,” learning occurs through participation in a business-case simulation which is engaging, realistic, and practical. This leads to much greater retention of learning and emotional buy in compared to traditional training methods.

Total 349 words used.

The Interviewer Experience was designed to address three broad learning objectives:

1. Understanding the value of a taking a structured interview approach including the impact on the candidate experience
    
2. Understanding how to detect and address interviewer bias in the interviewing process
    
3. Acquiring basic interviewing skills (e.g., how to gather and evaluate data, proper note taking, how to effectively manage an interview to enhance process efficiency and the candidate experience)

To measure the impact of the program on these targeted areas, participants in the program were provided with an evaluation survey to complete at the end of the simulation. The survey uses a five-point rating scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The expectation was that ratings 3.5 and higher would be good while ratings above 4.0 would be considered excellent. Survey items were statements such as:

“The Interviewer Experience increased my knowledge on how to run an effective interview.”

“I plan to apply the knowledge and skills I learned from the Interviewer Experience.”

“The Interviewer Experience improved my learning skills.”

All survey items were rated with an overall average of 4.4 from Walmart and PepsiCo participants across all survey items.

These results are particularly impressive given that 85% of the survey respondents conducted 21 or more interviews (65% of the respondents conducted over 40 interviews). These were very experienced interviewers, yet 91% indicated they increased their knowledge of how to conduct an effective interview while 94% indicated they planned to apply the knowledge and skills they learned in the Interview Experience.

Please see the following participant testimonials:

•            “I am impressed with this entire experience. This is what learning should feel like.”

•            “The method of a role-playing training approach utilizing, videos, reading and other mediums really made this an engaging program!”

•            “Questions were not ‘give me’ questions!  You had to pay close attention to details and think through responses.”

•            “The detailed feedback was helpful.  Even when it was “almost” right but could have been better, there was specific feedback about what to consider.”

Total 42 words used.

We've attached a variety of different materials to help bring Interviewer Experience to life through this submission:

1. Interviewer Experience Resource Book
    
2. The Interviewer Experience Brochure 
    
3. How to Remove Bias from Selection Methodology

4. Interviewer Experience User Interface Examples

5. Interviewer Experience Demo Walkthrough Video