2 EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
formation, and to make a friend. To ascertain whether the 
applicant has the qualifications necessary for success in the 
job for which he is applying is a sufficiently obvious func- 
tion; but no employment interviewer is successful who 
ignores the fact that he has at least two other highly impor- 
tant tasks. 
One of the duties of the interviewer is to inform the appli- 
cant about the character of the job and the concern in which 
he is seeking employment. He must make plain what kind 
of position is open, what the conditions of employment are, 
and the duties and privileges connected with the work. He 
must not only inform the applicant as to what his duties will 
be; he should acquaint him with the disadvantages as well 
as the advantages of the job and tell him what future it 
holds out to him. A new worker who is hired with the wrong 
impression as to conditions of employment, rate of advance- 
ment, irksomeness of the duties, and so on, soon leaves or 
becomes a disgruntled employee. In either event a mistake 
in interviewing has been made. 
The interview is the applicant’s first formal contact with 
the company and as such constitutes his first step in training. 
In it he takes his initial lesson in company policy and gets 
his first intimations of the personal attitude expected of him. 
The interviewer teaches as well as learns. 
Another function of the interview involves making the 
applicant want to work for the company in the capacity for 
which he is best qualified. The interviewer must sell his 
concern, and not consider himself a purchaser only. He 
must make a friend. A rejected candidate who goes away 
feeling that this would be a fine place to work, tells his 
associates. He increases the likelihood that there will be 
good material applying in the future. An applicant who 
leaves the employment office with an unfavorable impression 
becomes a liability, whereas a skilfully conducted interview 
would have helped to make him an asset to the concern, 
whether subsequently employed or not. 
The successful employment interviewer is thus not merely 
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