Psychological Aspects of the Interview

 

• The Personality Test is a process through which a potential candidate is evaluated by a board of members for prospective employment in the government services. A personality test implies that the board wants to test the personality of the candidate so that they can decide whether he/she is suitable for a government job or not. The qualities that are rated in this interview are, clarity of expression, grasp of narrative and argument, reasoning ability, appreciation of different points of view, awareness and concern for socio-economic problems, ranges and depth of interests and personal attributes relevant to interaction with people.
• The Interview aims at assessing the suitability of the candidate to be a competent administrator. The candidate is tested not only for his/her intelligence but also for his/her overall personality development, his/her attentiveness, balance of judgement and qualities of honesty, integrity and leadership.
• Thus, the selectors look out for these attributes in the candidate and decide whether he/she is suited for a career in civil services or not. For this, the candidate should have a positive attitude, an alert mind with quick reflexes, should be free from any sort of prejudice, should be good at making quick decisions and should have the ability to act under stress and to handle difficult situations.

 Type of Questions:

• Factual questions: These questions are fact based and every such question has one correct answer to it.
• Conceptual questions: Are asked to gather information about how strong the basics of the candidate are.
• Analytical questions: Candidates are asked to analyze certain object or event occurred in the recent past.
• Behavioural questions: Candidates are asked to relate what they did in past jobs or life situations that are relevant to the particular job relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities required for success. The idea is that past behaviour is the best predictor of future performance in similar situations. By asking questions about how job applicants have handled situations in the past that are similar to those they will face on the job, board can gauge how they might perform in future situations. Examples of Behavioural questions:

1. Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince an angry crowd to see things your way.
2. Give an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it.
3. Tell us about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.
4. Give an example of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree.
5. You know a lot of states provide subsidies to companies to attract invest ment; do you think it is right to do so?
6. Tell me what is happening to the gap between the havesand the have-not’s of the world, and in the developing world.What or who is responsible?
7. What is the relevance of the charkha, is it a tool or a symbol…what is it?
8. Our present police force has been unsuccessful during some public order problems like rioting etc.
9. Political class has misused them. What should be done to reform this police force?
10. If you are made a DC of vizag what would be your priorities?
11. Recently there were passenger fare hikes of railways. Is it justified?
12. Suppose you are collector in Maharashtra. There are incidents of attacks on north Indians. How will u handle the situation?
13. Tell me which three things are important for any successful event.
14. You are from IITM, there was a recent debate that girls should not come out of hostel after 11 pm and even if they come they should have an escort, do you have idea about it?
15. Suppose you are a DC in rural area and there are many departments where would you like to work first. Such as civil supplies, etc
16. You know ragging? Suppose you are DC then how will you check this?
17. Recently there was tsunami warning in the Indian Ocean; what would have you done as DC?

• Situational interview questions ask job applicants to imagine a set of circumstances and then indicate how they would respond in that situation; hence, the questions are future oriented. One advantage of situational questions is that all interviewees respond to the same hypothetical situation rather than describe experiences unique to them from their past. Another advantage is that situational questions allow respondents who have had no direct job experience relevant to a particular question to provide a hypothetical response. Some examples of Situational questions-

1. You are managing a work group and notice that one of your employees has become angry and hostile in recent weeks, to the point of disrupting the entire group. What would you do?
2. You are in a meeting. Your subordinate blames you for not doing well on a task, in front of all your peers and managers from other divisions. You believe that your manager is wrong in his critique, and that he might have come to this conclusion hastily without knowing all the information. You feel you are being treated unfairly in front of your peers. You feel that your reputation may be affected by this critique. What would you do in this situation?
3. If you are asked to take a stand on some real-life situation (you want to marry a girl from another community and your parents are opposed, so will you respect your parents’ opinion or will you save the honour of the girl who defied her parents to come with you?) pause for a few seconds and take a stand be firm. Board will try to shift your stand by playing sentimental cards, but stick to your stand by reasoning out. If you change stand, board will assume that your are prone to manipulation and hence a liability to the government.
4. There is a sincere and erudite CEO who is very hard working but is unable to avoid the failure of the company. There is a cunning CEO who is corrupt and practical and brings success for the company and himself. The first is fired and second is rewarded -Do you agree with the management’s decision? What would you do? Choose between honest-but-doesn’t-work employee and dishonest-but-gets-the-work-done employee.

• Other possible types of questions that may be asked in an interview include:

5. Background questions include a focus on work experience, education, and other qualifications. For instance, an interviewer may ask “What experience have you had with while serving in a rural hospital?”

Work experience questions require candidates to describe or demonstrate job knowledge. These are typically highly specific questions. For example, one question may be “What steps would you take to conduct a employee training session on safety?”

Handling The Interview

• In psychology, stress is a feeling of strain and pressure. Symptoms may include a sense of being overwhelmed, feelings of anxiety, overall irritability, insecurity, nervousness, social withdrawal, loss of appetite, depression, panic attacks, exhaustion, high or low blood pressure, skin eruptions or rashes, insomnia, migraine, gastrointestinal difficulties (constipation or diarrhoea), and for women, menstrual symptoms.
• Small amounts of stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress helps improve athletic performance. It also plays factor in motivation, adaptation, and reaction to the environment.
• Excessive amounts of stress may lead to many problems in the body that could be harmful. Stress could be something external and related to the environment but also may not be directly created by external events, but instead by the internal perceptions that cause an individual to have anxiety/negative emotions surrounding a situation, such as pressure, discomfort, etc., which they then deem stressful.
• Triggers can be stressful, such as when a person reports stress when hearing a song on radio or seeing a type of object that may remind the person of prior threatening events. Humans experience stress, or perceive things as threatening, when they do not believe that their resources for coping with obstacles (stimuli, people, situations, etc.) are enough for what the circumstances demand. When we think the demands being placed on us exceed our ability to cope, we then perceive stress.
• Stress Interviews are still in common use. The ostensible purpose of this interview is to find out how the candidate handles stress. Stress interviews might involve testing an applicant’s behaviour in a busy environment. Questions about handling work overload, dealing with multiple projects, and handling conflict are typical. Another type of stress interview may involve a single interviewer who behaves in an uninterested or hostile manner. For example, the interviewer may not make eye contact, may roll his eyes or sigh at the candidate’s answers, interrupt, turn his back, take phone calls during the interview, or ask questions in a demeaning or challenging style. The goal is to assess how the interviewee handles pressure or to purposely evoke emotional responses.
• Stress Situations during interview is caused by,

1. Too much counter questioning.
2. Too much factual questions
3. Harsh Remarks
4. Too much movement in the panel
5. Too much interruption
6. Try, you can Answer, Come on you are Engineer you must know it
7. Too much friendly environment

 Communication Skills

• Communication skills are in the form of one’s ability to express one’s views and listen to others effectively.
• The first rule is to be a good listener. It is not found frequently in practice. Candidates are always found to be eager to talk or give answers. But one should know that the answers become relevant only when you have responded correctly to whatever has been asked to you and not what you know or think on something else. So first of all develop the habit of paying attention to what people have to say, and then only try to respond through introspection.
• Couple of points for how you should make your responses : You should be very careful in choosing the words in whatever language you happen to speak in, as couple of words here and there could lead to change in the meaning. So always speak your minimal, try to be as precise as you can but at the same time be clear at your exposition. If you are well prepared you could also use persuasive communication.
• Persuasive communication aims at persuading others to see a problem from multiple perspectives and try to press to the point you are more comfortable about. Remember most of the times your interview is guided by what you have answered. Most of the questions would arise from what you have answered already. So, with persuasive communication you can more or less devise the course of your interview. But, this needs through practice and adequate preparation. So prepare your selves well.

 Non-Verbal Behaviour and Body Language

• It may not only be what you say in an interview that matters, but also how you say it (e.g., how fast you speak) and how you behave during the interview (e.g., hand gestures, eye contact). In other words, although applicants’ responses to interview questions influence interview ratings, their nonverbal behaviours may also affect interviewer judgments. Nonverbal behaviours can be divided into two main categories: vocal cues (e.g., articulation, pitch, fluency, frequency of pauses, speed, etc.) and visual cues (e.g., smiling, eye contact, body orientation and lean, hand movement, posture, etc.).
• Applicants’ nonverbal behaviours may influence interview ratings through the inferences interviewers take from your behaviour. For instance, applicants who engage in positive nonverbal behaviours such as smiling and leaning forward are perceived as more likable, trustworthy, credible, warmer, successful, qualified, motivated, competent, and socially skilled. These applicants are also predicted to be better accepted and more satisfied with the organization if hired.
• Applicants’ verbal responses and their nonverbal behaviour may convey some of the same information about the applicant. However, despite any shared information between content and nonverbal behaviour, it is clear that nonverbal behaviours do predict interview ratings to an extent beyond the content of what was said, and thus it is essential that applicants and interviewers alike are aware of their impact. You may want to be careful of what you may be communicating through the nonverbal behaviours you display. For example, the interviewers may perceive your behaviour on the basis of the manner you enter the interview room. Therefore, understanding of how you can reinforce your spoken words through your body language is very important
• Body language consists of gestures (movement of different parts of body), postures (body positions), and facial expressions by which a person manifests various physical, mental, and emotional states and communicates non-verbally (without using any word) with others.
• In some instances, communication takes place through body language alone. Look at how mute people communicate among themselves without using a word; how a news-reader conveys news meant for dumb without using a single word; how a Bharatnatyam dancer conveys the meanings through her actions using different parts of her body. In the case of an interview, body language can stand alone, for example, when you are answering a question, you can make out easily by looking at the facial expression of the interviewer whether he is happy with your answer or not. To become more aware of body language, one can watch various debates and news programs on different channels.
• Negative Body Language: While adopting positive body language is important, it is equally important to avoid negative body language during an interview. Taking guard against negative body language is required because in many cases, body language emerges from one’s subconscious mind. Therefore, you are required to know negative body language so that you can take precautions against them. Candidate should avoid too much body gestures as they can expose their personality/Psychology to the board. Using least body gestures are the safest to secure Maximum marks.
• Faking: The UPSC board is aware that applicants can intentionally distort their responses or fake them and such applicant faking has the potential to influence interview outcomes. Two concepts that relate to faking include social desirability (the tendency for people to present themselves in a favourable light), and impression management (conscious or unconscious attempts to influence one’s image during interactions). Faking in the personality test, then, can be defined as “deceptive impression management or the conscious distortion of answers to the interview questions in order to obtain a better score on the interview and/or otherwise create favourable perceptions”.
• Faking in the interview can be broken down into four elements. The first involves the interviewee portraying him or herself as an ideal job candidate by exaggerating true skills, tailoring answers to better fit the job, and/or creating the impression that personal beliefs, values, and attitudes are similar to those of the organization.
• The second aspect of faking is inventing or completely fabricating one’s image by piecing distinct work experiences together to create better answers, inventing untrue experiences or skills, and portraying others’ experiences or accomplishments as ones’ own.
• Thirdly, faking might also be aimed at protecting the applicant’s image. This can be accomplished through omitting certain negative experiences, concealing negatively perceived aspects of the applicant’s background, and by separating oneself from negative experiences.
• The fourth and final component of faking involves ingratiating oneself to the interviewer by conforming personal opinions to align with those of the organization, as well as insincerely praising or complimenting the interviewer or organization.
• Candidates also use faking while filling up their application form. For example, in hobby section, candidates often create a new hobby which they do not follow in reality. This thing can be really harmful as the board members are capable enough to identify the fake persons. Therefore, a candidate must be as true as possible. A little bit of hiding the facts may work but excessive use will only lead to rejection .

 

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