As a senior student in university, I have gone through manyinterviews -- interview to recruit new club members, interviewfor internship and so on. In my opinion, the procedure ofrecruitment is like choosing apples -- viewing resumes is likepicking up apples, you can only decide the appearances, or inother words, whether there are obvious flaws. Interview is likethe first bite, by which you know the real taste of an apple. Butonly by eating the entire apple can you see the core. That is to say, only by working with a personfor some time, can you judge a person. So to me, interview can help us to get a basic knowledgeabout a person and is indispensable in recruitment but it has its limitations.
Interview is most helpful in the aspect that it provides interviewer a chance to observe somethingthat resumes can not tell, for example, How the interviewee behaves? Is he/she nervous underpressure? Does he/she has excellent communication skills like eye contact? These things might bevery important. Because some job might ask more than one's academic knowledge it might alsorequire the ability of dealing with people and so on. Another important function of interview is thatit can help interviewer to decide whether the interviewee lied in his/her resume. As we all know,under hot completion, in order to get more chances, some people tend to lie in their resumesabout their experiences and so on. But in an interview, interviewer could ask questions related withinterviewee's experiences. If the experiences are made-up, it's easy to detect. The last advantageof interview I want to list here is that it can be carried out in different forms for different purposesfor example, pressure interview -- to see how a person react under harsh conditions, groupinterview -- to see how a person act in a team and so on. Thus, by arranging an interview in aparticular form, a company can find out the person most suitable for the job.
But interviews have their limitations. You can not find out all about a person in only a few hours likethat some apple might appear good and taste sweet but bad in the core.
In summary I want to point out that interview is an efficient way for companies to choose theiremploys but only by observing the long term performance, can you judge an employee.