Interviews4 min read
The structured interview, the least glamorous way to hire well
The same questions for everyone, answers marked against notes you wrote in advance. It feels stiff, and it is one of the best-evidenced things you can do in hiring.
Interviews4 min read
The same questions for everyone, answers marked against notes you wrote in advance. It feels stiff, and it is one of the best-evidenced things you can do in hiring.
Put this into practice on your next role.
Free for your first role. No card.
Compare scores across candidates question by question, not by overall impression.
Most interviews are conversations. The interviewer has a few favourite questions, follows whatever thread looks interesting, and comes out with a feeling. Two candidates for the same role may be asked almost nothing in common.
It feels natural, and it is one of the weaker ways to predict how someone will do in a job. The structured interview is the unglamorous alternative, and it is consistently near the top when researchers measure what works.
Structure is not a script read in a monotone. It is four decisions made before the first interview, so they are not made differently for each candidate.
The same questions
Every candidate for the role is asked the same core questions in the same order. Follow-ups are fine; replacing the question is not.
Questions tied to the job
Each question tests one of the must-haves in the job description. If a question does not map to a must-have, drop it.
Notes on what good looks like
For each question, write what a strong answer contains and what should worry you, before you hear anyone answer it.
Scores per answer
Mark each answer on a short scale straight after it is given, before the next question and before any overall judgement.
0.42 vs 0.19
Approximate validity of structured and unstructured interviews for predicting job performance
The part people skip is the most important one: deciding what a good answer sounds like before you hear any answers. Without it, the first confident candidate sets the bar, and everyone after is compared with them rather than with the job.
A useful answer key is something an interviewer can check by ear, in the room. “Shows good understanding” is not checkable. “Names a specific caching strategy and says when it would break” is. Here is what one looks like in full.
Worked question
“Tell me about a month-end close that went wrong. What happened, and what did you change afterwards?”
Listen for
Worry if
Mark this answer
The candidate says: “In March our bank feed broke and the close ran three days late. I was the one who noticed, and after that I added a check on the 1st of each month that the feed had imported. It has not happened since.” Using the key above, what would you score it?
Notice that nothing in the key depends on the interviewer knowing accounting deeply. That is the point. A hiring manager who is not a specialist can still mark this answer fairly, because the specialist knowledge went into the key.
Keep the scale short. Four points works well, because it has no middle to hide in.
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 · Strong no | Hit red flags, or could not answer |
| 2 · No | Some of what we look for, not enough for the role |
| 3 · Yes | Most of what we look for, no red flags |
| 4 · Strong yes | Everything we look for, with specifics, unprompted |
Write each score down with one line of evidence: what they said that earned it. That line is what you will argue about later, and it is much easier to argue about a quote than a feeling.
“It feels robotic.” It feels more robotic to the interviewer than to the candidate. Candidates generally prefer knowing that everyone was asked the same thing. You can still be warm; you are just being warm while asking good questions.
“I learn more by following the conversation.” You learn more about the things the conversation happens to go near. Keep ten minutes at the end for open conversation, and do not score it.
“It takes too long to prepare.” About an hour per role, once. Every interview after that is shorter, and the decision meeting is much shorter.
Hiring on evidence: 0 of 5 read
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