There was the applicant who was a self-confessed vampire. There was the woman who suggested sex in exchange for a job offer. There was the guy who couldn't be bothered taking out his music earphones for the interview and the one who made himself at home by putting his feet up on the desk.

Then there are the more subtle types, who, knowing Molinari's background as a high-level soccer coach, do everything soccer-like short of wearing cleats to the interview in an attempt to win him over.

"You'd be surprised what people do," said Molinari, a Victoria-based human resources recruiting and selection specialist and a soccer devotee who has played, coached and mentored for teams ranging from his university soccer team to Canada's military teams to B.C.'s under-16 girls team, which won a silver medal in Saskatchewan this summer.

Sometimes the outcome of the interview is clear from the beginning, but for most companies, the decision isn't so straightforward. The interview can lead to hiring decisions that have lasting -- and often disastrous -- repercussions.

"The unstructured interview is probably the least valid and the least reliable and it is probably the one done most often in the workplace," said Molinari.

If you base your hiring on interviews that use the top 10 most-asked questions as the sole criteria, you might as well pick a resume out of a hat. The odds of landing the best candidate are about the same, said Molinari.

"In structured interviews, you ask the same questions in the same manner to all applicants, but they don't necessarily tap into behaviours and competencies," he said.

Instead, Molinari and other proponents of behavioural interviewing take the gambling factor out of the process by adhering to standardized formula testing and interviewing that relies on past behaviour as a predictor of future success.

"Structured, behaviourally based interviews are the ones that give you the biggest bang for the buck," said Molinari. "It is the most valid and most reliable of all the interview techniques.

Behavioural interviewing allows for a more objective assessment than such open-ended questions as "Tell me about yourself," or "Are you good in customer service?"

Most people can probably figure out what the interviewer wants to hear and all of us no doubt can paint the rosiest picture of our strengths and talents. Harder though to fool the interviewer who asks: "Describe a time you went the most out of your way to provide exceptional customer service?"

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