subject: Case Appraisal Method For Applications [print this page] In the course of economic life people are employed every day, usually after an interview of some sort. Some appointments are fortuitous, and others disastrous. For example, a sports coach may be hired and take his team to the top of the League, or incur a string of dismal losses. As employment conditions become more stringent and complex it becomes increasingly important for interviewers to become more skilled. The correct decision can lead to prosperity. The case interview system may help to ensure that the most appropriate decisions are taken
Advice is most frequently handed out to interviewees, not interviewers. It is the candidate who most feels the pressure of focused attention, and the threat of evaluation and rejection. Conversely, a successful application may alter the direction of career and life.
Perhaps it is a vast store of failed job interviews that has brought about a perceived need for improved techniques, both on the part of interviewees and interviewers. Case interview techniques promise to achieve more reliable ends for job interviews. Interviewers and interviewees are able to engage in work related discourse and get a feel for how they think and feel about issues that are likely to arise in possible future scenarios.
In a typical 'case study' job interview the candidate will be given a fictitious situation of the sort that might arise within the job under discussion. For example, an investment banker might be asked what he would do in a crisis situation when the bank has brought itself to the brink of bankruptcy through poor investments. An oil executive might conceivably be asked what concrete and quantifiable measures he would take to prevent spills in a newly developing oil field.
The responses of the candidate will give information pertaining to how the candidate thinks and responds to various situations. Vicarious behavior is not necessarily identical to realistic behavior, but it does give a good indication of what real time behavior is likely to be, without incurring risk. A candidate's responses can be analyzed in many different ways in order to improve the chances of a correct appointment being made.
Job interviews can take many different forms, and the case study job interview is only one technique out of many. Even within this class of interview technique there are many variations. In some situations a candidates might be asked engage in complex calculations, and in others he might be asked to work with peers in solving a problem.
The well known TV series, 'The Apprentice', can be described as one sort of case interview. It provided some interesting cases of how the best candidate, in a viewer's opinion, might still be rejected, despite the exhaustive selection process. Like many situations involving human beings, a case interview may not be perfect, though better than techniques practiced in the past.
