Are two interviewers better than one?

Mario Fifić and Gerd Gigerenzer

Journal of Business Research, 2014, vol. 67, issue 8, 1771-1779

Abstract: How many interviewers per job applicant are necessary for a company to achieve the highest hit rate? Are two better than one? Condorcet's Jury Theorem and the “wisdom of the crowd” suggest that more is better. Under quite general conditions this study shows, surprisingly, that two interviewers are on average not superior to the best interviewer. Adding further interviewers will also not increase the expected collective hit rate when interviewers are homogeneous (i.e., their hits are nested), only doing so when interviewers are heterogeneous (i.e., their hits are not nested). The current study shows how these results depend on the number of interviewers, their expertise, and the chance of free riding, and specify the conditions when “less is more”. This analysis suggests that the best policy is to invest resources into improving the quality of the best interviewer rather than distribute these to improve the quality of many interviewers.

Keywords: Interview validity; Best interviewer; Wisdom of the crowd; Less is more; Free riding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:67:y:2014:i:8:p:1771-1779

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2014.03.003

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