A few minutes before your interview is to begin, a typical unstructured interviewer skims through your correspondence, application, and resume. He formulates a loose plan on what to cover in the interview. Perhaps he will scribble some notes or write out a few questions. This is the opponent that industrial psychologists want to take on, and, unfortunately, these kinds of interviews do exist. If the psychologists just claimed to offer a better alternative to this kind of interview, we'd quickly agree and wish them luck in vanquishing such a lazy and unfair process.
Good statistics hide the frailty of the foundation of their entire program.
Encouraging signs among the indoctrinated I suspect that it will be the work of those from outside the industrial psychologists' research program that will lead the way to improved employment interviews in the future. The program of the industrial psychologists is getting increasingly out of touch with what employers need to succeed in the current business environment. Still, there have been some encouraging signs lately that even some indoctrinated insiders are finally recognizing some of the difficulties with their field. One of the most useful ways to spot research trends in industrial psychology is through the pages of the Annual Review of Psychology . Only now is the reaction of job hunters being recognized as an issue to be investigated instead of dismissed as irrelevant.