How to Conduct a Structured Interview: Steps, Questions and a Scoring Guide

A structured interview asks every candidate the same questions, in the same order, and scores each answer against the same predefined criteria. An unstructured interview is a conversation that goes wherever the interviewer takes it.

The difference sounds small. The research says it is not. In the largest recent review of hiring methods, Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens (2022, Journal of Applied Psychology) estimated the validity of structured interviews for predicting job performance at .42, the highest of the common methods they reviewed. Unstructured interviews came in at .19.

In plain words: the link between a structured interview and later job performance is more than twice as strong as for an unstructured one. This guide shows you how to run one.

Why unstructured interviews fail

Unstructured interviews feel natural, and most interviewers believe they are good at them. They fail for predictable reasons:

• Different candidates get different questions, so you cannot compare them.
• First impressions drive the rest. Interviewers decide in the first minutes and spend the rest of the time confirming it.
• Similarity wins. People rate candidates who are like them more highly, whether or not that predicts performance.
• Nobody writes down evidence, so the debrief compares feelings.

Structure does not remove judgment. It makes sure judgment is applied to the same information for everyone.

Step 1: Define what the job needs

Start with the work, not with a list of adjectives. Ask the hiring manager and one or two people who do the job well:

• What will this person do in the first six months?
• What separates the people who do this work well from those who struggle?
• What would make someone fail in this role, even with a strong CV?

Turn the answers into four to seven criteria. Good criteria are specific enough that you can hear evidence for them: "plans a shift for 10 or more people" is a criterion, "leadership" is a category.

Step 2: Write questions for each criterion

Write one or two main questions per criterion, and the follow-ups you will use. Two question types work best:

• Behavioral questions ask about the past: "Tell me about a time when you..." Past behavior in similar situations is the most reliable evidence you can get in an interview.
• Situational questions ask about a realistic future scenario: "Imagine that... What would you do?" They are useful for candidates with little work experience.

Avoid hypothetical questions about personality ("Are you a team player?") and brain teasers. They produce rehearsed answers and little evidence.

Step 3: Build an anchored rating scale

For each criterion, write what a weak, an acceptable and a strong answer sounds like, before you interview anyone. This is called a behaviorally anchored rating scale.

Example for the criterion "handles customer conflict":

Rating	What the answer sounds like
1: No evidence	No example, or the example shows blaming the customer or escalating without trying.
2: Some evidence	An example, but the candidate mainly followed a script or handed the problem to someone else.
3: Clear evidence	A specific example where the candidate listened, found the real problem and solved it within their authority.
4: Strong evidence	Several examples, including one where the candidate also changed something so the problem would not repeat.

The anchors are the part most teams skip, and they are the part that makes scores comparable between interviewers.

Step 4: Run the interview the same way every time

1. Open with the same short introduction: who you are, how long the interview takes, that you will take notes and that there will be time for their questions.
2. Ask the questions in the same order, in the same words.
3. Use planned follow-ups when an answer is general: "What exactly did you do?", "What happened next?", "What was the result?"
4. Take notes on what the candidate says, not on what you think of it. Score afterwards.
5. Leave time for the candidate's questions at the end.

Follow-ups are allowed in a structured interview. What changes is that they are planned and their purpose is the same for everyone: to get specific evidence for the criterion.

Step 5: Score independently, then debrief

Each interviewer scores every criterion on their own, right after the interview, and writes one line of evidence per score. Only then does the panel meet.

In the debrief, go criterion by criterion. Where scores differ by two points or more, ask each interviewer to read their evidence. Most disagreements come from one interviewer having seen something the other did not, and that is exactly what the debrief is for.

20 structured interview questions

Adapt these to your criteria. Each one has a natural follow-up: "What exactly did you do?" and "What was the result?"

Problem solving

1. Tell me about a problem at work that had no obvious solution. How did you approach it?
2. Describe a time you had to make a decision without all the information you wanted.
3. Tell me about a mistake you made. How did you find it, and what did you do?

Planning and prioritization

4. Tell me about a week when you had more work than you could finish. How did you decide what to do first?
5. Describe a project you planned from the start. How did you break it down?
6. Tell me about a deadline you missed or nearly missed. What happened?

Working with others

7. Tell me about a time you disagreed with a colleague about how to do something.
8. Describe a situation where you needed help from someone who did not report to you.
9. Tell me about a time you had to give someone difficult feedback.

Customer and stakeholder focus

10. Tell me about the most difficult customer or stakeholder you have dealt with.
11. Describe a time you had to say no to a customer or a manager.
12. Tell me about a time you found out what a customer really needed, beyond what they asked for.

Learning and adaptability

13. Tell me about something you had to learn quickly for your job. How did you do it?
14. Describe a change at work that you did not agree with at first. What did you do?

Leadership (for roles that manage people)

15. Tell me about someone you helped develop. What did you do, and what changed for them?
16. Describe a time you had to deal with a performance problem in your team.
17. Tell me about a decision you made that was unpopular with your team.

Situational questions (for early-career candidates)

18. Imagine you are given two urgent tasks by two different managers. What would you do?
19. Imagine a customer is angry about a mistake that was not your fault. What would you say first?
20. Imagine you notice a colleague cutting a safety corner. What would you do?

Common mistakes that undo the structure

• Changing questions between candidates because "this one was different." Then you cannot compare them.
• Skipping the anchors. Without them, a 3 still means different things to different interviewers.
• Discussing candidates before scoring. The first opinion spoken anchors everyone else.
• Too many criteria. Interviewers cannot hold ten criteria in mind. Four to seven, split across interviewers.
• Asking about protected characteristics to "get to know the candidate." Family, age, health and religion are off-limits in a structured interview, as in any interview.

Running structured interviews at scale

The hardest part of structured interviewing is consistency across many interviewers and many candidates. Every interviewer drifts a little, and the first-round load often lands on recruiters who have twenty other things to do.

Firstview helps in two places:

• The first round. The AI Interviewer runs the same structured interview with every candidate, live and by voice, in their own language. It asks your questions, follows up when an answer falls short and writes a verdict for each criterion with the candidate's own words. It does not analyze faces or video, and a person decides who moves on.
• Later team interviews. The Notetaker joins your Zoom, Google Meet or Teams interviews and fills your scorecard template from the recording, one section per interviewer, so the evidence is captured while it is fresh.

Both use the same criteria from CV screening to the final round. See how this works for professional roles.