Assessing the candidate in the selection interview : The role of interviewer ’ s personality 6

The study explores the relative contribution of interviewers’ personality and interviewers’ ratings of candidate’s personality in predicting interviewers’ ratings of candidate’s job suitability and examines the moderating effect of interviewers’ personality on the relationship between ratings of candidate’s personality and job suitability. Results showed that ratings of candidate’s Big Five personality traits were related to ratings of candidate’s job suitability, as well as were interviewers’ Agreeableness and Extraversion. Interviewers’ Openness and Agreeableness had a moderating effect on the relationship between interviewers’ ratings of candidate’s personality traits and ratings of candidate’s job suitability. Results reveal the role that interviewer’s Agreeableness, Extraversion and Openness play in the assessment of candidate in the selection interview.


Highlights:
• Interviewer's personality had the direct effect on ability to perform the job ratings.• Interviewer's traits had direct effect on ratings of overall suitability.• Interviewer's Agreeableness and Openness moderate the assessment of the candidate.• Judgments about hiring candidates are determined by interviewers' personality.
The interview is probably the most popular personnel selection technique (Posthuma, Morgeson, & Campion, 2002;Wilk & Cappelli, 2003).Even though it has been demonstrated that the validity of selection interview is lower than Corresponding author: sofija.cerovic@yahoo.comthe validity of general mental ability tests (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998), it still remains the most preferred assessment method (Topor, Colarelli, & Han, 2006).Based on a comprehensive meta-analysis, McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt, and Maurer (1994) reported the higher validity of structured than of unstructured interviews.Scholars agree that adding structure to the interview can increase its validity (Macan, 2009;Posthuma et al., 2002).Assessing candidates' personality is part of a usual selection procedure, as it has been widely accepted that one's personality influences job performance.According to the studies that investigated the personal correlates of job performance, Conscientiousness was the strongest correlate of the job performance, Extraversion was found to be a valid predictor of performance in management and sales, Openness was related to training proficiency, while the findings about Agreeableness and Emotional Stability were inconsistent (Barrick & Mount, 1991;Hurtz & Donovan, 2000;Salgado, 1997).Meta-analyzing research related to motivation, Judge and Ilies (2002) suggested that Conscientiousness was the strongest positive, while Neuroticism was the strongest negative predictor of performance motivation.

Assessing candidates' personality
Although the candidates' personality is usually assessed with self-report measures (Hough & Ones, 2001), in the last few years scholars became more interested in exploring candidates' personality assessment in employment interviews (Van Iddekinge, Raymark, & Roth, 2005) for several reasons.Firstly, Huffcutt, Conway, Roth, and Stone (2001) demonstrated that basic personality traits are the most often rated constructs in the employment interview.Secondly, interviews provide both verbal and nonverbal indicators of candidate's personality (van Dam, 2003).Specifically, Anderson and Shackleton, (1990) showed that candidates' nonverbal behaviors were related to interviewers' ratings of some personality traits, while Blackman (2002) found that interviewers' personality judgments were more accurate in the face-to-face than in telephone interviews.Thirdly, an interview allows an interviewer to get acquainted with a candidate which changes his/her status from the person who does not know the candidate at all to a person who knows the candidate pretty well (Barrick, Patton, & Haugland, 2000).Finally, an interview can be used in addition to self-report measures of personality, providing a more complete assessment of personality dimensions (Van Iddekinge et al., 2005).
A number of researchers focused their work on investigating the accuracy of interviewers' personality judgments using three criteria, behavioral prediction, i.e. the extent to which personality judgment can predict behavior, other-other agreement, the extent to which different people agree in personality judgment of the same person and other-self agreement, i.e. the correlation between ratings and self-report measures of personality (Funder, 2012).Following the last criterion, significant correlations were found for Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness, but not for Conscientiousness and Emotional stability (Barrick et al., 2000).Also, interviewer's general mental ability, Openness, and dispositional intelligence were related to the accuracy of personality judgments (Christiansen, Wolcott-Burnam, Janovics, Burns, & Quirk, 2005).
Van Dam (2003) reported that interviewers spontaneously assess candidates' personality traits and that ratings of Emotional stability, Openness and Conscientiousness were related to hiring recommendations.She had also shown that interviewers differed in trait inference, hiring recommendation, as well as in the weights assigned to personality dimensions when deciding on candidates' hireability, thus raising the question which interviewer's characteristics lead to such individual differences.

Interviewer's characteristics and evaluation of candidates
As it was shown that interviewers differ in their ability to accurately predict candidates' job performance (Judge, Higgins, & Cable, 2000), in the past two decades there has been an increasing interest in interviewer's validity, rather than in the validity of the interview itself.Analyzing the decisions of 62 interviewers, Pulakos, Schmitt, Whitney, and Smith (1996) pointed that the difference in interviewers' validity ranged from -0.10 to 0.65.These findings initiated an investigation on the effects of interviewers' characteristics on the evaluation of candidates in the employment interview.

Effect of rater's Big Five personality traits on performance appraisal and selection of candidates
Numerous studies have focused on the effects of rater's personality traits on performance appraisal.Bernardin, Cooke, and Villanova (2000) used Big Five model in order to predict raters' leniency in performance appraisal and found that raters high on Agreeableness provided more elevated ratings, while those high on Conscientiousness provided less elevated ratings.Another study confirmed that raters with higher scores on Agreeableness provided more elevated ratings than those lower on Agreeableness if they expected to give faceto-face feedback and less elevated when they used a behavioral checklist (Yun, Donahue, Dudley, & McFarland, 2005).Although these studies underlined the role of rater's personality in the performance appraisal, there is still a question whether these findings can be generalized in a selection interview situation.
On the other hand, a small number of studies has focused on the effect of interviewer's personality traits on the interview outcome.Although the role of interviewer's personality in the evaluation of a candidate is an important issue, to best of our knowledge, only Unsal and Caliskur (2004) investigated the influence of interviewers' Big Five personality traits in hiring recommendations.They showed that interviewers high in Neuroticism were much more negative in evaluation and judgments of the hireability of a qualified candidate than those with a low score in this dimension.
The aim of this study was to investigate the relative contribution of interviewers' Big Five personality traits and interviewers' ratings of candidate's Big Five personality traits in predicting interviewers' ratings of candidate's job suitability, as well as to examine the moderating role of interviewers' personality in the relationship between interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality traits and ratings of candidate's job suitability.

Method Sample
The sample consisted of 160 female participants, 21-29 years old (M = 23.06,SD = 1.83).For this study, we recruited future human resources practitioners who received formal education in organizational psychology and did their internships for approximately one month in the field of human resources where they gain practical experience in conducting job interviews.Participants were in the role of interviewer.

Ratings of candidate's job suitability.
Interviewers assessed candidate's job suitability on a set of four indicators operationalized through 15 items designed for this study.The indicators were: motivation (five items, e.g."I think this candidate is motivated for this position"), ability (four items, e.g."I think this candidate is able to perform the work successfully"), personality adequacy (three items, e.g."This candidate has the personality traits that are important success in this job") and overall suitability (three items, e.g."This person is a good candidate for this job").The respondents indicated the extent to which they agreed with a particular item on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 -strongly disagree, 5strongly agree).All four measures of candidate's suitability were of a satisfactory reliability, i.e.Cronbach's alphas were .86 for motivation, .83for ability, .87 for personality adequacy and .93 for overall suitability.

Procedure
Firstly, all participants completed BFI assessing their own personality.Afterward, they were presented with the task of assessing personality and job suitability of the candidate.Participants were asked to read an advertisement for the sales person position carefully in order to identify the main job requirements.Immediately after, they watched a video of an interview with the candidate who applied for the advertised sales position.The video, constructed to last approximately 5 minutes, highly resembled a common practice in conducting job interviews and comprised both situational and hypothetical questions, based on which participants assessed candidate's personality.Questions were created to tap Big five personality traits (e.g.Openness to new experiences -Please tell me what do you do in your free time, what are your hobbies; Agreeableness -Please describe one conflict situation that you had with your colleague on your previous job).The actual interviewer was placed near the camera, so it appeared that the applicant was talking to research participants.All participants saw the same video with the same candidate.After seeing the video, participants assessed candidate's personality on BFI and candidate's job suitability.
In order to avoid potentially confounding effects that steam from gender matchmismatch (Goldberg & Cohen, 2004), in this study both the applicant and interviewers were females.

Data analysis
In order to assess independent effects of interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality and interviewers' personality, as well as to test if interviewers' personality plays a moderating role, moderated regression analysis was conducted.In moderated regression analysis, the predictor is entered in the first step of a hierarchical regression, moderating variable in the second, while the interaction of these two variables is entered in the third step.A significant regression coefficient for the interaction term would indicate that the relationship between the predictor and criterion varies over levels of the moderator variable.
In the present study, four moderated regressions were conducted.All regressions consisted of the same three steps, but they differed in the criterion variable (rating of motivation, ability, personality adequacy and overall suitability).In the first regression, criterion variable was the rating of motivation, in the second rating of ability, in the third rating of personality adequacy and in the fourth rating of overall suitability.In the first step of each regression as predictor variables were entered interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality traits, in the second interviewers' personality traits, while in the third step the interactions between interviewers' personality traits and ratings of correspondent candidate's personality traits were introduced.

Results
Descriptive statistics is presented in Table 1.Kolmogorov -Smirnov test indicated that all variables, except interviewers' Conscientiousness and ratings of overall suitability, were distributed normally.These two variables were normalized using Bloom's formula.Table 2 shows correlations between all variables included in this study.Most of the intercorrelations between interviewers' personality dimensions were moderate, which is in the line with previous research (John & Srivastava, 1999).Some interviewers' personality traits were correlated with interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality traits.Interviewers' Agreeableness was proven related to the ratings of ability and ratings of overall suitability, while interviewers' Conscientiousness was associated with the ratings of motivation.Moreover, interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality traits were related to all indicators of candidate's job suitability.Finally, intercorrelations between indicators of candidate job suitability excided .50 which may indicate that participants did not make a clear difference between ratings of ability and ratings of personality.

Interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality
In step 1, interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality traits accounted for 53% of the variance of ratings of candidate's job motivation as seen in Table 3.In this step the standardized regression weights for ratings of Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism were found to be significant.
This block explained 45% of the variance of ratings of candidate's ability to perform the job.When the candidate was assessed higher on Conscientiousness and Openness, she was assessed as more able to perform the work successfully.
The first block of predictors accounted for 51% of the variance of ratings of candidate's personality adequacy.All predictors significantly contributed to the percentage of the explained variance, namely with Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Extraversion as positive and Neuroticism as the negative predictor.
Interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality traits explained 48% of the variance of ratings of candidate's overall job suitability, with ratings of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness as valid predictors.

Interviewers' personality
Interviewers' personality traits were entered in the second step.The second block of predictors did not account for significant amount of the unique variability in interviewers' ratings of motivation and personality adequacy.
This block explained the additional amount of variability in interviewers' ratings of candidate's ability.In this step, the standardized regression weight was significant for interviewers' Agreeableness.
The same block also explained a significant amount of variability of ratings of overall suitability beyond that of the interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality traits.However, when this block was included in the analysis, rating of candidate's Extraversion became the valid predictor of ratings of overall suitability.Interviewers' Extraversion and Agreeableness had significant standardized regression weights.

Moderating effect of interviewers' personality
The third step did not explain the additional amount of variability in interviewers' ratings of candidate's job motivation and personality adequacy.None of the interaction terms was the valid predictor except the one between ratings of candidate's Agreeableness and interviewers' Agreeableness for motivation ratings and between ratings of candidate's Openness and interviewers' Openness for personality adequacy.
On the other side, the third block of predictors explained the additional amount of variability of ratings of candidate's ability to perform the job.Namely, the model with all three blocks of predictors accounted for 55% of the variance of ratings of candidate's ability.By introducing the interaction terms in the equation, the rating of Agreeableness became the valid predictor of ratings of candidate's ability, as well as interviewers' Extraversion.Table 3 indicates that the interaction between ratings of candidate's Openness and interviewers' Openness was significantly related to interviewers' ratings of candidate's ability.Figure 1 illustrates that when the interviewer scored average or high in Openness, the ratings of candidate's Openness were positively related to those of candidate's ability (r = .56,p <.01).In contrast, when the interviewer scored low in Openness, the magnitude of the positive relationship was reduced (r = .47,p <.01).
PSIHOLOGIJA, 2018, Vol.51(1), 91-105 The interaction between ratings of candidate's Agreeableness and interviewers' Agreeableness was significantly related to interviewers' ratings of candidate's ability.Figure 2 illustrates that when interviewer scored average in Agreeableness, the ratings of candidate's Agreeableness were positively related to ratings of candidate's ability (r = .53,p <.01).In contrast, a high score in Agreeableness led to the reduced magnitude of the positive relationship (r = .30,p <.05).

Figure 2. Moderating effect of interviewers' Agreeableness on the relationship between ratings of Agreeableness and ratings of ability
The third block explained the additional amount of variability of ratings of candidate's overall suitability.So the model with all three blocks of predictors was found to account for 59% of the variance of ratings of candidate's overall suitability.Once the interaction terms were introduced into the equation, interviewers' Agreeableness stopped being the valid predictor of ratings of candidate's overall suitability.
Table 3 shows that the interaction between ratings of candidate's Openness and interviewers' Openness was significantly related to interviewers' ratings of candidate's overall suitability.Figure 3 illustrates that when interviewer scores average in Openness, ratings of candidate's Openness were positively related to ratings of candidate's overall suitability (r = .62,p <.01).Contrarily, a low score in Openness reduced the magnitude of the positive relationship (r = .42,p <.01).Moreover, the interaction between ratings of candidate's Agreeableness and interviewers' Agreeableness was found to be significantly related to interviewers' ratings of candidate's overall suitability.Figure 4 illustrates that when interviewer scored low in Agreeableness, ratings of candidate's Agreeableness were positively related to ratings of candidate's overall suitability (r = .60,p <.01).On the other hand, high scores in Agreeableness reduced the magnitude of the positive relationship (r = .37,p <.01).When the interaction terms were introduced in the equation, interviewers' Agreeableness stopped being the valid predictor of ratings of candidate's overall suitability.

Discussion
The aim of this study is to investigate the relative contribution of interviewers' personality and interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality in predicting interviewers' ratings of candidate's job suitability, as well as to estimate the moderating role that interviewers' personality plays in the relationship between interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality and ratings of candidate's job suitability.
The first finding of this study refers to the relative contribution of interviewers' ratings of candidate's personality in predicting ratings of candidate's motivation, ability, personality adequacy and overall suitability for the job.Namely, the ratings of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were shown to be the valid predictors of ratings of candidate's motivation.This study shows that interviewers who rated the candidate high on Neuroticism, rated her as more motivated for the job, than those who rated candidate low on this dimension.This is contrary to Judge and Ilies (2002) finding from the research of personal correlates of job motivation about selfrating of Neuroticism being the strongest negative predictor of motivation for the job.This mismatch may be one of the reasons for reduced interview validity.On the other hand, in the current study, the rating of Conscientiousness was identified as the strongest predictor of motivation, which is consistent with the Judge's and Ilies (2002) finding.Regarding the candidate's ability to perform the job, ratings of Openness, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were proven as valid predictors which is consistent with studies that showed the highest correlation between self-ratings of Conscientiousness and job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991;Hurtz & Donovan, 2000;Salgado, 1997).This result can also be broadly related to finding that ratings of intelligence are related to Conscientiousness and with those indicating that ratings and self-ratings of Openness are related to divergent thinking (McCrae & Costa, 1987).
Candidate's personality was assessed as adequate if the candidate was rated low on Neuroticism and high on Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness that is rather expected for the job in question.Accordingly, when the candidate is rated high on Neuroticism, she is assessed as more motivated, but her personality is assessed as less adequate for the job.
Findings of the present study are partly consistent with those of Van Dam (2003).The ratings of overall suitability can be considered equivalent to Van Dam's hiring recommendation.She also found that ratings of Conscientiousness, Emotional stability and Openness were related to an employment decision, whereas, in present study instead of the rating of Emotional stability, the rating of Agreeableness was proven as the valid predictor of overall suitability ratings.Although the ratings of overall suitability were mostly similar to hiring recommendation, these two variables are not completely identical neither in terms of the item number nor in terms of their content, which might explain partially inconsistent findings.
Another finding of this study refers to the relative contribution of interviewers' personality traits in predicting the ratings of candidate's motivation, ability, personality adequacy and overall suitability.Interviewers' personality traits were the valid predictors for only two criterion variables, ratings of ability and overall suitability.As far as the ability ratings are concerned, interviewer's Agreeableness and Extraversion were the negative predictors, whereas Extraversion negatively predicted ratings of overall suitability.A partial explanation of these results can be found in previous studies of performance appraisal where raters high on Agreeableness provided less elevated ratings than those low on Agreeableness when the behavioral checklist was used (Yun et al., 2005).Additionally, previous studies showed that these two traits are related to interviewers' dispositional reasoning, a construct that is correlated with accuracy of personality judgments (De Kock & Lievens, 2015).The present study did not confirm results of Unsal and Caliskur (2004) regarding effect of interviewer's Neuroticism on employment decision, probably because they found interaction effect between Neuroticism and candidates' qualification level.
This study also proved that interviewer's Openness and Agreeableness had a moderating effect on the relationship between ratings of correspondent personality traits and ratings of candidate's ability and overall job suitability.Namely, for curious and creative interviewers ratings of candidate's Openness are stronger predictors of ratings of candidate's ability and overall suitability, than for those who are more conservative and unimaginative.On the other hand, the relationship between ratings of candidate's Agreeableness and ratings of ability and overall suitability is weaker when the interviewer is compassionate and altruistic than when she is suspicious.This result is excellently in the line with the research of Van Dam which pointed to the differences between interviewers regarding the relationships between ratings of candidate's personality and hiring recommendation (Van Dam, 2003).This is the major finding of this research because it highlights the role of interviewers' personality in the employment interview.It should be kept in mind that some interviewer's personality traits have a direct contribution in predicting candidate's job suitability and that they are, also, moderating variables that strengthen or weaken predictive contribution of ratings of candidate's personality traits.This all indicates that individual differences in some interviewers' personality traits may lead to reduced interviewer validity, which in turn may lead to the reduced interview validity.These results imply that there is a necessity for additional training of interviewers in order to minimize the bias in personality and suitability judgments that steams from their own personality.

Limitations of the study and recommendation for future research
This research was designed as a laboratory study.It enabled to control for potentially confounding variables since each participant watched the same video of an interview with the same candidate.Nevertheless, several limitations of this study could be noted.The first limitation is the use of a single interview.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Moderating effect of interviewers' Openness on the relationship between ratings of Openness and ratings of ability

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Moderating effect of interviewers' Openness on the relationship between ratings of Openness and ratings of overall suitability

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Moderating effect of interviewers' Agreeableness on the relationship between ratings of Agreeableness and ratings of overall suitability