Mastering Structured Interviews: A Guide to Effective Hiring
Structured interviews can be scary for both candidates and interviewers. For candidates, it’s about getting their dream jobs, and for the interviewer, it’s about finding the deserving candidates to take the job.
In today’s world, structured interviews have been effective for future job performance. It can help interviewers to more easily find the best candidates. For organizations, it’s very important to understand the essential elements of a structured interview to increase the chances of finding the right candidates in the selection process.
So, let’s dive and dig together about everything we need to know about structured interviews!
What are Structured Interviews?
Generally speaking, a structured interview is when the interviewer asks the candidates the same set of questions and gathers their responses. Then, the rating system scores each answers equally, allowing us to easily compare the candidates. This type of interview collects decent and valid responses from the candidates.
Structured interviews are more effective and efficient in businesses experiencing rapid growth. As they can also find the right candidates without bias. As structured interviews are commonly used, professionals and interviewers should be involved in this hiring process and learn how to conduct and evaluate these interviews.
Key Features of Structured Interviews
Structured interviews have key features that differentiate them from other interview methods:
Efficiency
By following a systematic approach, structured interviews are more efficient than unstructured interviews. This can save time for both candidates and interviewers, especially during a ramping season.
Standardized Questions
Structured interviews use a set of questions that are asked in the same order for all candidates. As a result, this allows for a fair comparison of the candidates’ responses.
Scoring System
These scoring systems are based on the desired skills and qualifications for the position. Additionally, each question corresponds to a specific system, and interviewers use these systems to score candidate’s responses.
In general, structured interviews are used to improve accuracy, consistency, and fairness during the hiring process.
Advantages of Structured Interviews
There are a lot of advantages to using a structured interview. These are:
Easier to compare
Interview responses are easier to compare since the same questions are asked of each candidate. It is easier for interviewers to compare their responses.
Reduced bias
Asking the same question in the same order to all candidates reduces the risk of bias occurring via the order or nature of the question asked and promotes fairness.
Increased Reliability and Validity
By utilizing standardized questions, structured interviews focus on giving a more reliable and valid assessment of candidates.
Improved Accuracy of Hiring Decisions.
Structured interviews help interviewers make more accurate hiring decisions. As a result, it increase the chances that the candidate is fit for the role.
If a job requires a high degree of accuracy, then structured interviews will be more effective. This type of approach not only supports legal compliance but also reduces the risk of discrimination claims, identifying its objective and fair process.
DisAdvantages of Structured Interviews
However, there are some disadvantages to using structured interviews.
Time-consuming
Developing a structured interview requires careful planning and development of questions. This process can be more time-consuming than other interview formats.
The interviewer can’t be able to evaluate deeper into a candidate’s response
Since candidates are asked the same questions in the same order, interviewers may feel that candidates’ responses are incomplete or unsatisfactory.
The interview may feel less personal
It feels more like an interrogation for candidates, which can make candidates feel uncomfortable.
To reduce these disadvantages, businesses and organizations use a combination of structured interviews with elements of semi-structured or unstructured methods to understand candidates’ abilities and appropriate roles.
How to Create Structured Interview Questions?
In this section, we will discuss how we can create structured interview questions that make it easier for interviewers to evaluate the candidate’s skills, experiences, and behavior. The following are the sample questions that can help us streamline the interview process:
Open-Ended Questions
Implementing open-ended questions during the interview allows interviewers to gain deeper insights into the candidate as they can showcase their experiences, knowledge, and problem-solving skills, allowing the interviewers to gain a deeper understanding of their approaches to certain situations and capabilities.
Job-Specific Questions
Job-specific interview questions allow interviewers to evaluate the capabilities and skills of the candidates in certain roles, determining whether the candidate can excel and contribute to the growth and success of the company with the candidate’s skills, expertise, and experiences.
Yes/No Questions
Yes or No interview questions are as helpful and essential as the other forms of questions mentioned. Interviewers can utilize this form of question to quickly determine the necessary information and details related to the candidate for clarification.
Behavioral Questions
Behavioral interview questions can assist interviewers in terms of evaluating a candidate’s skills and approaches to certain circumstances that may arise. It can help interviewers determine whether the candidate’s behavior and abilities align with the company culture and the role that the company is hiring for.
Situational Questions
Situational interview questions are example scenarios that allow candidates to showcase their skills and approaches to the created scenario and assess their problem-solving abilities and decision-making abilities in unforeseen circumstances.
Conclusion
To be a good interviewer takes a lot of time to learn and practice. However, there are ways to improve your interviewing skills, and that is when you utilize structured interviews to assess candidates fairly and equally. Although structured interviews have downsides, overall, this is an excellent method to use if you’re evaluating the skills and knowledge of candidates and have limited time during the hiring process.
Do you want to revolutionize your interview strategy? Join Panls now! Panls is an interview as a service platform that helps your company streamline the interview process, keeping your internal team focused on valuable tasks while improving your company’s quality of hires. Sign up now!
