Interviews

Interviews are individual meetings with potential or existing customers where a set of questions are asked and answers are discussed to understand their concerns. Interviews can tackle complex issues, however, requires trained resources.

The auditors normally make it a point to interview the top level management and senior managers individually. Such individual interviews are a must for capturing their thinking about the future plans and opportunities available for the company. Also by virtue of occupying strategic positions the top management provides a perspective required for a good HRD audit. Thus a good HRD audit begins with individual interviews of top management. Individual interviews also are essential when sensitive matters and sensitive information has to be obtained. Such information is available particularly about the styles and culture through individual interviews. Union leaders, departmental heads, some strategic clients and informal leaders are all interviewed individually. In addition if the organization is small and is manned by largely professionals an attempt is made to enlarge the coverage and randomly selected representative sample of employees from different levels and different functions could be interviewed.

Interviews are best used when you need an individual’s perspective, rather than a group’s. They can be conducted in person or over the telephone, and each method has its advantages. Both allow you to get unique customer perspectives, pursue unexpected lines of questioning, and learn insights that may lead to innovation. Face-to-face interviews give you the opportunity to create rapport with the interviewee that might not be possible over the phone. Face-to-face interviews allow you to make eye contact and pursue more complex questions and in-depth discussion. Interviews conducted over the telephone allow you to gather information from customers widely dispersed over a large geographic area. They also allow you to gather a lot of data quickly and at a low cost.

Top level management and senior managers are interviewed, individually. Union leaders, departmental heads, some strategic clients and informal leaders are also interviewed, individually.

It helps in following:

• knowing their thinking about future plans and opportunities available for the company.
• knowing about their expectations from the HR audit.
• getting sensitive information pertaining to working styles and culture.

Group interview method

Group interviews and discussions with the employees and/or executives of the company. It facilitates collection of information about effectiveness of existing systems. Ideally group of 4 to 8 employees should consist of same or similar hierarchy from cross functional areas.

Normally for the audit of companies having thousands of employees, it is not feasible to meet everyone individually. It is the experience of the author that group discussions and interviews is a good mechanism of collecting information about the effectiveness of existing systems. Group interviews are conducted normally for groups of four to eight individuals. It is preferable to have employees drawn from same or similar levels. This is because in Asian cultures there is likely to be inhibition on the part of junior employees to freely express their views in the presence of their seniors. However, it is quite common to give cross functional representation of employees in the same group. If the organisation is large, an attempt is made to conduct group interviews for each function separately to keep the levels homogenous. In the individual and group interviews for HRD audit normally the following open ended questions are asked

• What do you see as the future growth opportunities and business directions of the company?
• What skills and competencies does the company have which you are proud of?
• What skills and competencies do you need to run your business or to perform your role more effectively at present?
• What are the strengths of your HRD function?
• What are the areas where your HRD function can do better?
• What is good about your HRD sub-systems like performance appraisal, career planning, job rotation, training, quality circles, induction training, recruitment policies, performance counselling, worker development programmes, HRD departments, etc?
• What is weak about them? What can be improved?
• What changes do you suggest to strengthen HRD in your company?
• What do you think are the ways in which line managers can perform more development roles, etc?

Interview Types

Every auditor has a preferred style of obtaining the information they need.  These are some basic types of interview styles you may encounter.  Some may choose to utilize a combination of different styles.

Structured Interview – A structured interview is typically formal and organized and may include several interviewers, commonly referred to as a panel interview.  An interviewer who has a more structured style will usually begin with what is known as an “icebreaker” question.

Next, the interviewer may enquire about the day-to-day work responsibilities and the general company philosophy.  He or she may then ask you a series of questions regarding past educational, co-curricular, and work experiences.

Unstructured Interview -The auditor is interested in hearing from employee, so as to ask a variety of different open ended questions. You will find an unstructured interview to be more conversational and less formal in tone than a structured interview.

Behavioral Interview – This approach is based on the belief that past performance is the best predictor of future behavior.  Therefore, behavioral interview questions are designed to probe previous experiences in order to determine how employee might behave in similar situations in the future.  In this type of interview, employee is asked, how you did he handle a specific situation in the past.

Other Types of Interview

• Informal, conversational interview – No predetermined questions are asked, in order to remain as open and adaptable as possible to the interviewee’s nature and priorities; during the interview the interviewer “goes with the flow”.
• General interview guide approach – The guide approach is intended to ensure that the same general areas of information are collected from each interviewee; this provides more focus than the conversational approach, but still allows a degree of freedom and adaptability in getting the information from the interviewee.
• Standardized, open-ended interview – The same open-ended questions are asked to all interviewees; this approach facilitates faster interviews that can be more easily analyzed and compared.
• Closed, fixed-response interview – Where all interviewees are asked the same questions and asked to choose answers from among the same set of alternatives. This format is useful for those not practiced in interviewing.
• Telephone Interviews – Telephone interviews afford a certain amount of flexibility. It is possible, for example, for interviewers to put complex questions over the telephone. The interviewers can probe, skip questions that prove irrelevant to the case of a particular respondent and change the sequence of questions in response to the flow of the discussion, and earlier replies can be revisited. The interaction between interviewer and interviewee that is possible over the telephone simply is not achievable through a mailed questionnaire. In comparison to personal interviews, telephone interviews do not appear to enjoy any margin of advantage. Perhaps the only advantages are those of speed and cost. Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) involves conducting the telephone interview whilst seated at a computer. Responses are entered directly into the computer, by the interviewer. The screen displays the questionnaire and any skipping of questions, due to earlier responses directing that some questions are not applicable in the case of the interviewee, is controlled automatically by the computer. Since the responses are entered directly into the computer the data is instantaneously processed. The computer can also be programmed to produce standardised reports

Interview and HR Audit

HR auditor conducts interview of top management, line managers and staff. Interview with the top management indicates their opinion of future plans and prospects available for the company. Interviews with other line managers and staff are conducted to get information about effectiveness of existing HR systems, culture and strategies.

Defining and narrowing the scope of the discussion are also important, as these steps will facilitate the construction of questions to be asked during the interview. When preparing for an interview, a review of the organization and process to be discussed is critical. An understanding of the procedures that are documented, along with the identified controls associated with the processes and procedures, is necessary to be able to formulate questions and follow along with interviewees as they describe their job responsibilities. There may be occasions when existing controls are not well documented, if at all; it is in these cases where a process walk-through can be useful in identifying control points. If there is a previous audit of the area, a review of the report and possibly the related work papers can be helpful, but they should not influence the current audit as they were from a previous point in time.

Questions to be used during the interview can be developed through a combination of procedure documentation review, past experience with the area being audited and past experience on similar audits for other auditees. In general, it may be useful to have a general set of questions (topics) that outline what is to be covered during the course of the interview. These questions and topics are based on the audit test objective, and the degree of detail is dictated by the level of the person being interviewed—the higher the level, the less detail is expected during the course of the interview. Specific questions should not be provided prior to the interview, even when requested, as the auditee may choose to simply provide a written response to the questions without undergoing an interview. Providing an outline of the topics to be covered, rather than the specific questions, should provide the auditee the information needed prior to conducting the actual interview. The questions asked need to be open ended, resulting in a conversation and eliciting a detailed response, not a simple “yes” or “no” answer.

The identification of staff to be interviewed is also important. Because newly hired staff are likely to know less about actual operations and may be involved with less-critical operations, they should be avoided whenever possible. While it is more difficult to get time with more experienced staff (as they will be needed more by the organization), they will know more about the actual operations performed. This is another reason why it is critical to be very clear about the scope of the interview when scheduling the meeting.

When preparing for an interview of staff related to change management, it is important not to assume everyone agrees on the definition being used. Will the discussion include controls around source code changes, migration of application changes through development environments, changes to infrastructure components or emergency changes? Frequently, these items will be managed by different staff and, in larger organizations with many platforms, conducted differently depending on the platform in question.

The Interview – There are many opinions on where to conduct the actual interview. Some advocate having the interview conducted in the interviewee’s workspace for reasons that include having possibly needed information nearby. But to minimize distractions, it may be a good idea to conduct the interview away from the interviewee’s work area, unless an actual demonstration, walk-through or screen captures need to be included in the work paper documentation. The amount of on-hand information needed during an interview is minimal for process-related walk-throughs. Using a conference room with a whiteboard may help when mapping out processes.

It is helpful to begin the interview with a review of the purpose and objective of the interview to ensure that there is agreement on the purpose and the right people are present to accomplish the objective. Additionally, confirmation of the agreed-upon time constraints specified when scheduling the interview is likely to assure all participants that their time will be used wisely. It is useful to communicate to the interviewee that notes will be taken and there may be some follow-up items to complete after reviewing notes taken during the interview. It may be helpful to spend a bit of time talking about the auditor’s background to help start the conversation.

Depending on the size of the audit staff, it may be a good idea to have another audit staff member attend the interview as an observer, but prior to the audit that individual should be requested to refrain from asking questions unless he/she feels something critical is being missed. The addition of an extra observer helps clarify questions when reviewing notes taken post-interview and establishing follow-up items. Lead auditors may consider attending interviews that will be conducted by more junior audit staff or with audit staff who may not be familiar with the entity being audited. The goal is not to outnumber the auditee through a show of force, but to ensure accuracy (in the case of having more than one auditor present) and reduce any contention and the possibility of the interview getting off track (in the case of a junior auditor conducting the interview). The next item is applicable for any type of interview, be it a job interview, a TV/radio interview or any other speaking occasion intended to gather information. It is critical to listen to the full response to the questions asked, not cutting off the person responding or completing their response for them. Another important point is to avoid questioning the interviewee as to their skills or abilities; such questions are likely to cause the interviewee to close up and the interview will quickly end.

During the interview, auditors should be cognizant that as closely as they are watching interviewees’ reactions, the interviewees will be watching the auditors as well. Physical posture, facial expressions and hand gestures will be observed. In fact, in one case an auditor was conducting an interview and taking notes, and one of the people being interviewed remarked, with concern, “He is reaching for the red pen.” This was in response to the auditor’s habit of using a red pen to make notes for follow-up later, but it was clearly misinterpreted by the interviewee. Subsequent to that, the auditor made sure to use only one pen for note taking, replacing the red pen with an asterisk in the margin.

Closing the Interview – At the conclusion of the interview, it is helpful for the auditor to review the items covered and highlight any areas of potential concern. The auditor should take care not to worry the interviewee by stating that there are major breakdowns or issues; instead, the message should be that some areas will need additional follow-up or that there appear to be possible control gaps. If there were items discussed for which physical evidence/documentation will be needed (e.g., change tickets, project documentation), the auditor should review these and clarify the process that has been used for obtaining all audit evidence. The interview should conclude with a word of thanks to the interviewee for his/her time.

After the Interview – After the interview has concluded, the auditor must closely review any notes taken during the interview and construct a list of follow-up questions and physical evidence that may be needed. If the interview was conducted with another member of the audit team, the two auditors should review and compare notes together to ensure a common understanding of the discussion.