Female candidates face more personal questions by male interviewers: Report

The study found that 70 percent of the interviewers do not follow at least one of the three interview metrics and nearly 40 percent of interviewers missed introducing themselves when starting the conversation. (Image Credit: Pixabay)

The lack of measurement and metrics for the interview experience is one of the primary bottlenecks in conducting effective job interviews, research has found.

The State of Your Interview Experience Report by SHL Labs, SHL’s innovation hub, revealed that 43 percent of male interviewers asked a personal question when a job candidate was a woman; the proportion was lower at 35 percent when the candidate was a man

The personal questions pertained to marital status and information about children, siblings, and family.

The report analysed more than 3,000 interviews, involving more than 100 job profiles, sampled from a broader pool of 600,000 interviews. All were conducted in India, across 10 different organisations. Broadly, these organisations were part of the Indian information technology, software and services Industry.

When interviewers ask questions that are not job-related, the study said they decrease the predictive power of interviews, open the possibility of biased hiring decisions and, in some regions, expose the organisation to legal risk.

These effects are amplified when members of some sub-groups are asked such questions more often than members of other sub-groups, as in the case with gender.

The devil in the detail 

Calling the interviewer a brand ambassador of the organisation during the interview conversations, the report mentioned three appropriate important parts of etiquette in the process – self-introduction, the ability to listen, and keeping their webcam on.

The study found that 70 percent of the interviewers do not follow at least one of the three interview metrics and nearly 40 percent of interviewers missed introducing themselves when starting the conversation.

The analysis highlighted that 56 percent of the interviewers miss out on "candidate-centric conversations". Specifically, 30 percent of interviewers ask questions that may not be related to the job profile and requirements. Also, nearly 27 percent of interviewers do not provide job candidates an opportunity to ask questions.

Breaking down personal questions, 22 percent of interviewers ask about the candidate’s parents; nearly 10 percent of the interviewers enquire about children. Nearly 8 percent of interviewers also ask about the marital status of a candidate during the conversation.

Traditionally, in-person interviewing processes were preferred/prevalent; therefore, there was a lack of an automated measurement system or feedback loop that could provide insights into how interviewing practices run inside the organisations.

“Recently in the spur of digital transformation, the practice of interviewing candidates has moved to digital platforms. This change made it easy to set up measurements and corresponding feedback,” Dr Kuldeep Yadav, Director at SHL Labs, told Moneycontrol.

It's not that organisations do not give importance to interviews. That is the reason why practically each position is filled using some sort of interview.

Yadav pointed out that there is a lot of obscurity and ambiguity in this process. For example, talent leaders do not have visibility on what kind of interview experience their interviewers are providing to job candidates.

Lack of a structured format 

SHL Labs said the interview process needs to be consistent across candidates for a given job profile. However, only 40 percent of the interviewers ask the prescribed questions during an interview.

According to Yadav, structured interviewing is found to be the most predictive hiring assessment for job success. Interviewing, in general, may have a varying degree of structure, but essentially at a broad level, needs to be consistent across all candidates for a given job profile.

“When an interviewer asks personal questions that are not related to the job, then the interview outcome may not provide a good signal – and less predictive power – on whether the employee will be successful at the job,” he added.

How to treat personal questions?  

Experts say the importance of personal questions during the interview is to seek details on travel, relocation, and availability for the job – the role may require onsite travel and shuttling between cities.

“This is mainly to understand the longevity that a female candidate would have in the organisation,” said Prasad Ghorakavi, founder and Chief Executive Officer at Rock Interview, an interview preparation platform.

For instance, if a female candidate who is recently married is being considered for a position, there could be a possibility that she may need maternity leave, which is for six months.

“This creates a void in the team and dependency on other team members increases to deliver projects timely,” he added.

In theory, experts say it's very easy to answer but practically very challenging to tackle personal questions. Candidates need to think of all possibilities and provide the best and most suitable answer.

“Candidates can give just one-word answers to these questions rather than giving more details about themselves,” Ghorakavi said.

The more information the candidates share, the more curious the interviewer gets.

For instance, to the question “what is your plan for your marriage,” a candidate can reply, “very unsure of what can happen…..so difficult for me to answer right now…”