You will be able to run a structured interview with the same questions and a scoring guide for every candidate.
Wei Ling has three candidates for the new role. She interviewed them over two days, chatting about their careers, their last jobs and what they did on weekends. The second candidate, Shu Fen, was easy to talk to, laughed at her jokes, and had also studied at NTU. Wei Ling came away sure she was the one.
When Daniel asked why Shu Fen was stronger than the others for running a client account, Wei Ling found she couldn't say. She had asked each candidate different questions, taken few notes, and judged mostly on how the conversation felt.
An unstructured interview is a conversation that goes wherever it goes. Each candidate gets different questions, the interviewer forms a general impression, and the decision rests on that impression.
The trouble is that it measures mostly how well someone does in an unstructured interview. Confident, chatty candidates who are similar to the interviewer tend to do well. Quieter candidates, people from different backgrounds, and people interviewing in their second or third language tend to do worse, whether or not they can do the job.
Decades of research in personnel psychology, including a widely cited 1998 review by Frank Schmidt and John Hunter, has found that structured interviews predict job performance better than unstructured ones. The reason is simple: when every candidate gets the same questions, tied to the same skills, and is scored the same way, you are comparing them on the job rather than on the conversation.
A structured interview asks every candidate the same questions in the same order, with each question tied to a skill in the role profile from lesson 7.1, Define the role before you write the ad.
There are two useful kinds of question. Past behaviour questions ask what the candidate actually did: "Tell me about a time a client was angry about something that wasn't your fault. What did you do, and what happened?" Situational questions ask what they would do in a realistic case from the job: "A client emails at 5pm saying their shipment is missing and they need an answer tonight. Your manager is on leave. What do you do?"
Past behaviour questions work well when candidates have relevant experience. Situational ones help with candidates who are earlier in their careers or changing fields. A mix of both is common.
Follow-up questions are fine, but keep them neutral and similar across candidates: "What did you do next?" "What was the result?" "What would you do differently?" The aim is to hear the whole answer while leaving the candidate to choose where it goes.
For each question, write down in advance what a weak, an adequate and a strong answer looks like. This is the scoring guide. It turns a general impression into a judgement you could explain to someone else.
For the angry-client question, Wei Ling's guide looked like this. A weak answer blames the client or the company, or describes no specific action. An adequate one describes listening, apologising for the inconvenience and getting the immediate problem fixed that day. A strong one does all of that, then also describes following up to make sure it stayed fixed and changing something so it wouldn't happen again.
Score each answer right after the interview, before you speak to anyone else about the candidate. If several people interview, each scores independently first, then you compare. Discussing first lets the most confident voice in the room set everyone's view, and the scores lose their value.
Talk is not the same as doing. Wherever you can, add a short work sample that looks like the real job. For Wei Ling's role, that might be a set of three client emails to answer and a small spreadsheet of shipment data with two errors to find.
A good work sample is short, realistic and the same for everyone. Score it against a written guide, just like the questions.
Keep the time it asks for reasonable. If the task takes more than an hour or two of a candidate's time, pay them for it. Long unpaid tasks are unfair to candidates, especially those with jobs and families, and they discourage good people from applying.
Wei Ling reran the final round with all three candidates: five structured questions, a scoring guide, and a 45-minute work sample. Shu Fen scored well on rapport but missed both spreadsheet errors and gave a weak answer on the angry-client question. Another candidate, Aziz, had been quiet in the first interview and seemed less sure of himself. He scored highest on both the questions and the work sample. Wei Ling could now explain her choice to Daniel in two sentences, with evidence.
The questions themselves are the foundation of all this, and they come from the role profile. Write yours next, along with the guide that will tell you what a good answer sounds like.
Write five interview questions linked to your role profile, with a description of a weak, adequate and strong answer for each.
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