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Structured Oral Interviews

Structured oral interview development for public safety agencies.

Structured
Oral
Interviews

IOS frequently develops what we refer to as “structured oral assessments” (SOAs). Distinct from an “interview,” an SOA seeks to assess relevant job skills through a variety of methods. An SOA may contain biographical interview questions, job-related scenario-based questions, mini-presentations, modified role-play formats, written exercises, etc. IOS seeks to use varied formats to increase the reliability of the SOA and maximize its job-relatedness.


Our methods for development and deployment of an SOA ensure maximum standardization across individual job-seekers, and result in a highly robust and valid instrument specifically tailored for an agency’s needs. At every stage of our involvement, we focus on increasing accuracy of measurement to ensure the most highly-qualified job-seekers are identified. We do this by tailoring the SOA content based on subject matter expert input, rigorously training assessors, and following well-established measurement frameworks and administration plans.

structured oral interviews - IO Solutions

Trained Assessors

Standardization of public safety hiring and promotional practices ensures fairness and legal compliance. The use of trained assessors utilizing a structured interview format demonstrates this standardization. Assessors are mostly experts in the public safety industry and understand the requirements and responsibilities for each position.

Areas of assessor training include:

• Common rating errors
• Importance of standardization
• Consensus scoring
• Explanation of the behavioral criteria the assessors will be rating

The use of behavioral criteria ensures that each candidate is rated consistently over the same job-related criteria.

Custom Structured Oral Interviews

IOS has developed a system that allows each agency to format their SOI to fit specific agency needs. A catalog of our stock, or off-the-shelf, questions is provided to the agency. These questions focus on critical situations and incidents that occur on the job and are categorized by performance dimensions.

These dimensions include, but are not limited to:

• Decision-making ability
• Interpersonal skills
• Supervisory skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Teamwork orientation

An agency can review the different questions and select questions pertinent to their structured oral interviews.

Agencies are also invited to request customized SOI questions to be developed. In order for the items to be customized to the department, a job analysis needs to be conducted. From the job analysis, the questions will be developed based on the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities for the specific rank.

The finalized SOI is provided to the agency along with the necessary materials allowing the agency to self-administer the structured oral interviews to its candidates. The additional materials include the rating criteria for each question, assessor-training manual, rating forms and candidate orientation material.

Legal Compliance and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

The clear advantage of compensatory testing models is that they maintain high validity levels while reducing disparate impact, but the advantage is even greater. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) suggests a rule of thumb for gauging disparate impact called the 4/5th Rule. If the ratio that describes the passing rate of the minority group in comparison with the passing rate of the majority group is less than .80, or 4/5th, the testing process is said to display adverse impact. Generally, cognitive ability tests will result in adverse impact, but the larger problem is that a disproportionate number of racial minorities will achieve scores at the lower end of the score distribution. This means that even if these candidates pass the test, they will not likely be selected for employment. Besides balancing the passing rates of protected classes, compensatory testing systems also create a more balanced distribution of test scores, resulting in a greater proportion of racial minorities scoring towards the upper end of the distribution. Practically speaking, more racial minorities will be selected. This system not only has a greater chance of satisfying the EEOC’s 4/5th Rule, it also accomplishes the important agency objective of hiring a diverse group of qualified employees.

Questions? Contact Us!

 

Summary
Development of Structured Oral Assessments
Service Type
Development of Structured Oral Assessments
Provider Name
Industrial Organizational Solutions,
1520 Kensington Road, Suite 110,Oak Brook,Illinois-60523,
Telephone No.(888) 784-1290
Area
Worldwide
Description
IOS frequently develops what we refer to as “structured oral assessments” (SOAs). Distinct from an “interview,” an SOA seeks to assess relevant job skills through a variety of methods.