Effective Interview Practices for Accurately Assessing Counterproductive Traits

A first line of defense for an organization against counterproductive behavior in the workplace is the accurate detection during the interview process of a job candidate's counterproductive traits. This article discusses aspects of the interview format and other considerations relevant to increasing the accuracy of the assessment of a job candidate's personality. Recent research suggests that the unstructured interview may be of high value in comparison to the traditional structured interview format, when accurate personality prediction is the criterion (Blackman, in press-a; Ickes, Snyder and Garcia 1997). Interviewers can also become more sophisticated in evaluating the probable accuracy of their judgments by learning about four important moderators of accuracy: properties of the judge, of the target, of the trait being judged, and of the information upon which the judgment is based (Funder 1995)