The hiring chair · Build your interview
Four steps to an interview
that actually predicts
Structured interviews sit at the top of the evidence rankings for predicting who will do the job well (Sackett et al., 2022). Structure is four decisions, made once, before anyone walks in. Make them here, print your guide, and walk in ready. Like everything on The Table, what you build stays on your device.
Step one Name the job's real requirements
Requirements are functions, never proxies. What does a person actually have to do here?
Before you keep it: do the people doing this job today hold one? Postings demand degrees far more often than incumbents have them, and every unnecessary credential requirement screens out capable people, lengthens your fill time, and shrinks your pool in a county at 2.7 percent unemployment. If the skill matters, name the skill and test it. If the degree genuinely matters, keep it and be able to say why.
Fuller and Raman, Dismissed by Degrees, 2017; degree reset trend: Burning Glass Institute and HBS, 2022
Step two Pick the method mix for this role
Recommendations update to your role type. Structured questions are always in; the evidence says they carry the most weight, so they are not optional here.
Work sample ideas for this role type
Step three Write the anchored questions
One question per essential function. Choose behavioral (their past) or situational (a scenario), then edit the wording and the three anchors until they sound like your workplace. The anchors are what you score against, so make weak, solid, and strong concrete.
Pick a role type and functions in step one, and your questions will build themselves here.
Step four Commit to the scoresheet
Score each answer 1 (weak), 2 (solid), or 3 (strong) during the interview, not from memory afterward. Total the sheet. Rank candidates by total. Mechanically combining scores beats holistic gut integration of the same information (Kuncel et al., 2013). The sheet decided, and that protects you, the candidate, and the hire you almost talked yourself out of.
Your guide is assembled on this page and printed from your browser. It is never sent to us, and it is not stored on any server.
Structure is the fairness mechanism
The instrument you just built is not paperwork. Identical resumes get different callbacks by name and by record, and that has not improved in 25 years of field experiments. The same anchored questions that best predict performance are also what give a candidate with a record, a gap, or no degree their fairest shot: everyone answers the same questions, and the scoresheet decides.
Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Pager, 2003; Quillian et al., 2017