Interview

The interview is one of the most widely used methods for assessing personality. It is a face-to-face interaction between two or more people, where the interviewer asks questions and the interviewee responds. The goal is to gather information about the person’s thoughts, feelings, behaviour, and overall personality.

Interviews can be classified into two broad types: structured interviews and unstructured interviews.

In a structured interview, the interviewer follows a fixed set of questions, asked in a predetermined order. Every candidate is asked the same questions in the same way. This makes the process highly objective and standardised, which means the results from different candidates can be compared directly. The main advantage is reliability — the interview is less likely to be influenced by the interviewer’s personal biases or mood. However, the rigid format can feel mechanical and may not allow the interviewer to explore interesting or unexpected responses in depth.

In an unstructured interview, the interviewer does not follow a fixed plan. The conversation is flexible, and the questions emerge naturally based on what the interviewee says. This allows the interviewer to probe deeper into specific areas, follow up on interesting points, and get a richer, more detailed picture of the person’s personality. The downside is that this format is highly subjective. The interviewer’s own biases, mood, and personal style can influence both the questions asked and how the answers are interpreted. This makes it difficult to compare one candidate’s interview with another’s in a fair, standardised way.

Beyond these two types, interviews can also be described by their purpose. A clinical interview is used by mental health professionals to diagnose psychological disorders and understand a client’s personal history. A selection interview is used by organisations to decide whether a candidate is suitable for a job. A research interview is used by psychologists to collect data for studies. …