Abstract
Employment interview remains the most popular selection tool used by majority of organisations. Given its importance, researchers investigated interview predictive validity and the decision-making processes resulting from the interaction of applicants and interviewers. There are ongoing debates whether applicant’s physical attractiveness and non-verbal behaviours are positively associated with interviewer evaluations, or whether applicant’s resume and verbal responses mostly affect interviewers’ hiring decisions.
In this study the author investigates the influence of the applicant’s non-verbal communication on the hiring managers’ evaluations during employment interviews in an Irish semi-state organisation. In order to respond to the research problem a number of issues need to be investigated such as: the validity of the employment interview in the case study organisation, non-verbal behaviours that predict job performance, relationship between non-verbal communication and personality traits, and interviewer’s evaluation process in the interview.
For the purpose of this research, primary data was collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with a HR Programme Manager and Hiring Managers from the case study organisation. In addition, the review of the secondary data was undertaken in order to present previous publications and studies on the topic.
The findings of this research enable a number of recommendations for the case study organisation in order to improve the interview validity. Author Keywords: non-verbal communication, employment interview, interviewer's evaluation
