Structured interview

A structured interview is the opposite of “let’s just have a chat and see.” The questions, their order and what counts as a good answer are all decided before the first applicant walks in. Hiring research recommends it more often than almost any other practice, and teams skip it more often than almost any other.

The four parts

1. Questions about the job. Each one ties back to a skill the job needs, not to the interviewer’s curiosity.
2. The same questions for everyone. Follow-ups can ask for more detail, but the main questions don’t change.
3. A rating scale with written examples. Each score has a short description of what an answer at that level sounds like. These descriptions are sometimes called anchors.
4. Separate ratings. Each interviewer gives their scores before talking to anyone else.

Why it matters

Unstructured interviews tend to favor whoever the interviewer gets along with. Two applicants get different questions, one gets a harder follow-up, and you can no longer compare them fairly. Structure makes answers comparable, leaves less room for interview bias and gives you a clear record of why each decision was made.

An example

For a job looking after existing customers, one structured question might be: “Tell me about a customer who was about to leave. What did you do?” The score descriptions might read:

• 1: No real example, or blames the customer.
• 2: A real example, but vague about what they did themselves.
• 3: A clear situation, specific steps and a result.
• 4: All of that, plus what they changed afterwards so it didn’t happen again.

Every interviewer uses the same descriptions, so a “3” means the same thing on Monday and Friday.

Semi-structured interviews

Many teams use a fixed set of main questions and allow free follow-ups. That keeps most of the benefit and lets the conversation feel natural, as long as the scores still follow the written descriptions.

How teams undo it

• Skipping questions for applicants they already like.
• Adding “tell me about yourself” small talk that ends up affecting the score.
• Writing the score descriptions after the interviews, to fit a favorite.
• Discussing applicants before everyone has given their scores.

Scripted AI interviews, where the AI reads the same questions word for word, take care of the first two parts automatically. The structured interviews guide covers the rest.