Rather than using traditional question and answer interviews to evaluate job candidates, employers should observe candidates as they perform some of the job actual tasks.

The issue of whether to assess the suitability of a candidate using traditional interview or to use actual work environment is a controversial one. On the one hand, traditional interview techniques are tried and tested. On the other hand, using new innovative techniques may lead to more accurate assessment of a candidate’s capability. However in final analysis, I believe that using actual work environment is more capable than traditional techniques.

The chief reason for my view is that in today’s highly complex, multitasking work environment, it is very difficult to assess the suitability of a person using traditional interview questions. For example, in a software world, traditional questions may be limited to just basic fundamental questions which are straight from the book. Whereas in actual work environment, situations may become highly complex than that and may require a combination of multiple skills to solve them. Testing the whole array of skills is very difficult using traditional techniques.

Another reason for my view is that candidates can mock around with the traditional interview techniques. There are a number of resources available on the internet which enables candidates to have a look at the questions an organization generally asks in the interview. Just type interview questions in any search engine like Google and a whole bunch of websites appears. Rather, if candidates were required to perform actual tasks, there is no way they can mock around and it will lead to a fair assessment of their skills.

While using actual work environment to assess the skills, the organization can actually measure the usefulness of a candidate as per its requirement. With traditional techniques, it’s only possible to measure the general ability of a candidate rather than to measure organization specific skills. By analyzing the behavior of candidate while he performs actual tasks, it is also possible to analyze his behavioral skills such as his capability to work in a team, how he handles crunch situations etc. When asked such behavioral questions in a traditional way, there is a fair chance that candidate may mock around with these.

In sum I concur that, although traditional techniques are tried and tested, the new techniques offer promising results. So, using actual work environment to assess a candidate’s skill is a fair way to assess a candidate’s job suitability.