Origins of the Workplace Interview
Launch library · evergreen read
As organisations grew larger and more formal through the twentieth century, structured methods for assessing candidates for a role developed alongside them, drawing on emerging ideas from industrial psychology about how to predict a person's future performance from a limited conversation. Formal training in the technique was rare at first, leaving much to individual instinct and improvisation.
Early efforts were often cruder than modern practice, relying heavily on subjective impression, but they established the basic template that persists today: a structured conversation designed to evaluate rather than simply to inform, with real consequences riding on its outcome. Real consequences for the candidate meant the stakes were never purely conversational, however informal the exchange felt.
Over time, the format has been refined considerably, with more attention paid to fairness and consistency, though the fundamental tension between genuine conversation and formal evaluation that shaped its earliest versions remains largely unresolved today. That original tension between genuine conversation and formal evaluation still shapes hiring practice in most organisations.