Applied Knowledge & Innovation
Interview Pilot Seminar Feedback
5th March 2004
There were 4 organisations (8 people) represented at the seminar, these were:
- Rolls-Royce plc
- United Utilities
- Blackburn Borough Council
- East Lancashire Higher Education Centre
Summary of feedback from forms
What do you think of the idea?
Positive
- Provides resources to improve all types of interviewing skills.
- Provides a different concept to the way things are done now.
- Will help company to consider structure and technique to improve existing course.
- Made us examine the way we do it now.
- Made us as, are we getting it right?
- Very good, this is one area of communication that we are not very good at.
- This is a good foundation on which to develop improved interviewing skills.
Neutral
- A good subject to choose.
- Good interviews can make a real difference to an organisation.
- An area where many people think they are good but they may not be.
What do you think of the content?
Positive
- Useful and well laid out.
- Good spread of content and well laid out.
- Excellent, clear, concise and gives food for thought.
Neutral
- Content was good but not enough time spent.
Negative
- Concept of what interviews are is a little narrow.
- Certain parts of the approach are a little academic and need to be applied.
- I would prefer more facts or distinctive statements to remember.
- Requires more punchy points.
- Boring to see someone use the Internet.
- Could be a bit more catchy.
- There was confusion concerning the objectives, to teach or to demonstrate methods.
How should it be delivered?
Positive
- The use of cartoons made the course more interesting.
- Good delivery.
Neutral
- Length of course is critical since managers have limited time available.
- Information should be available on the Internet.
- A lecture with follow on opportunities is best.
- The map as an index to learning material is good but needs the lecture first.
- Web based, we use this media more and more for information resources.
- There needs to be some practice
- E-learning could be used in outline, delivery and summary format.
- Modules could be e-learning but access to a tutor would be needed.
- Access from the web along with the availability of a hard copy.
- Should be split into 2 or 3 half day sessions.
Will it make a difference?
Positive
- This seminar will affect the interviews that we carry out next time.
- For organisations determined to improve, this will make a significant impact.
Neutral
- It would provide a resource.
- Course could be sold as a lecture with on going on line backup.
- Yes, as long as it is publicised well eg road show lectures.
- It could make a difference if summaries are included.
Negative
- Course could be targeted more specifically, eg. Public, private sector.
Other Comments
Positive
- It really did make me think about structured interviews.
- Content and presentation was excellent.
- A very useful and thoroughly enjoyable seminar.
- Some very good tips, especially bits about improving.
- Liked sections on Truth, Trust etc.
Neutral
- Discussion can be better than a lecture.
- Trainees will need practice.
- Think about running courses on people skills in general rather than specifics like interviewing.
Negative
- Don’t like cameras, restricts debate.
- More research is needed on learning styles.
Summary of additional points from the discussion:
Positive
- Presentation and techniques used made the seminar more interesting.
- Useful seminar in that it introduced challenges to existing practice.
- The use of stories is a good idea.
- The idea of considering what you need to know is good.
- There was general support for the knowledge management aspects and background of this work.
Neutral
- The map may encourage people to revisit the ideas on the web.
- Asking whether structured interview is affecting some candidate performance.
- Interviews sometimes need to be highly structured to respond to challenges of fairness.
- Thinking about how issues of truth can be addressed within a structured interview.
- E-learning methods can be an irritation, eg reminders about non completion of modules.
- Should self assessment be included in the learning dependency map framework?
- Learners should be allowed to mark whole areas of the map as already known.
- Should be delivered as a course with practice included.
- Trials are needed to establish if the approach is better than any other.
- E-learning is appropriate for knowledge transfer but not for practice.
- Could be used as an outline or background to more specific course.
- Accident investigation interviews are important for many organisations.
- Summarising is important in today’s world of information overload.
- Interesting to consider interviews that are information exchange in both directions.
Negative
- Less directly relevant than company training course.
- Confusion over whether seminar was demonstrating something or teaching it.
- Audio clips did not cover a wide enough level (job level) of people and comment.
- Not enough resource devoted the CHALLENGE aspect of interviews.
- Help desk approach has little value.
Review of feedback:
In general it is reassuring to receive confirmation that the idea of taking the knowledge based approach to issues like interviewing was received well. However, the overall comment concerning the content is not so encouraging. Specific items of content were received quite well but the main problem seems to have been the confusion introduced by attempting to explain how the Knowledge Structure Map was adapted to deliver a learning resource when most delegates expected the day to be only about content and not about how the content was derived and why.
There seemed to be an expectation that this was a pilot for a full course on interviewing and this attracted comment concerning the lack of practice. There really must have been problems here in the lack of clarity given by AKRI concerning the objectives of the seminar and the objectives of an intended full programme derived from the seminar and the feedback. Providing this up front clarity is something that we really must get right.
The main omission from the programme seems to have been the failure to address challenge in interviews. If this work is to be extended then the knowledge required to deal with challenge must be included on the map.
There seemed to be a mix of opinion concerning delivery.
Taking AKRI objectives into consideration :-
Overall Summary
Unless more resources become available, we should package the existing material for better web delivery using the existing programme and presentation slides and as much of the material as is appropriate. This should be made into a web resource but users should have access to this feedback so that they can see for themselves where the known weaknesses are. If resources do become available then the first thing to do would be to reconsider the map in respect of challenge in interviews and also to consult other experts. The resources and programme should then be rebuilt from there.
The experiment did provide encouragement the AKRI can be justified in moving forward in its efforts to take a knowledge based approach to other business issues. In particular, this approach, with improvements indicated from this experiment, should be used to address the primary findings from the initial TRaPS (now TRIPS) research.
In future sessions on any topic, we should not mix objectives. Although the mixed objectives were clearly stated (reviewing recorded presentation) at the seminar, the mixed message still caused confusion. We should not explain ideas and methods at the same time as presenting them.
