Accuracy of the Situational Interview in Rating Multiple Job Candidates

The importance of perceptual accuracy to human resource decision processes is evidenced by better than 40 years of accuracy research. This article extends such research by presenting an examination of the situational interview format (Latham, Saari, Pursell, & Campion, 1980) as a means of inducing and maintaining high levels of rating accuracy in a context in which interviewers must evaluate candidates in rapid succession. Situational interview ratings of 48 police sergeants and lieutenants showed consistently high levels of perceptual accuracy in both their overall ratings and differential accuracy scores in rating 6 videotaped sergeant/lieutenant job candidates who were of varying quality and appeared in 4 different multiple candidate sequences. Extensive experimental controls for "cueing effects" and ratings gained from a separate sample of 48 sergeants and lieutenants using a highly structured conventional format and familiar rating practices indicated that the accuracy of SI ratings were due to the SI itself.