Shifting my practice from Law to HR does shift my focus at times changing an interview into an interrogation. At times if the interviewee goes hostile, I resort to cross examination as well. Laughs apart, but it does make me question the validity and logic of an interview. Okay, lets stick to the word – and focus on the definition of an interview. Interview – Well! it may be defined as a conversation wherein questions are asked and facts or statements are elicited from another. But are these questions always open ended? Yes, there comes, a similarity between Interview and Interrogation that you always tend to ask.
Open ended questions help you in gauging the far horizon till which the candidate can imagine and how much he is able to make out of what you mean to ask. Such questions always help the interviewer in picking those little flaws from the answers provided which is almost always believed as a story. Here you apply your wit and hit back at the candidate as an interrogator. Practically, I would fail to differentiate between the two.
You cannot call people over to your office for an interrogation, owing to which we resort to the milder version of it, without losing the real essence and call it an Interview.
Sticking to the basics and coming down to define interrogation will be something commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and intelligence agencies with the goal of obtaining information. Huh, so what? that’s what we do. A candidate is showered with questions and is urged to answer to them.
Our goal as an interviewer also stays to obtaining information, moreover, we would also try to see between the lines and make that information work somehow, or the other. Above that, we do have the liberty, as against the interrogators, to validate it with the body language and gestures of the interviewee.
Having written the above said in a state of trance, I have believed in the fact that I am no less than a hiring interrogator (ego boost) who would be seen with love by the one interrogated as against those petty criminals seated in the interrogation room.
Hence, I am in the same role with the a spirit of benevolence. Perceptions can change everything, one just needs to look around. Where are my serendipity shades ?!
How to confuse an interview into an interrogation or the other way around
