What is a structured interview?
A structured interview ...
What is a structured interview? A structured interview is an effective interviewing process in which an employer can measure job related competencies of candidates. Through systematically asking tailored competency based questions that relate to their behaviour in the past or their proposed behaviour in a hypothetical situation an employer can gain a huge amount of insight into the candidate.
What are the benefits of doing this?
• Using a structured approach ensures the process is objective and fair to each candidate.
• Takes the focus off subjective decision making on a candidate which is when many hiring decisions go wrong.
• It allows the interviewer to focus on the actual competencies that are required for the role.
• Allows employers to understand the candidate’s personality, attitude and performance before they are hired for the role.
• Creates an easy to follow interviewing process for both the interviewer and the candidate.
• A good way to assess soft competencies such as teamwork, negotiating, conflict management and interpersonal skills.
Where do I start?
1. Using your Job Description focus on the competencies that are most important to be assessed for this role. Choose 4-6.
2. When creating interview questions a very good model to use is the STAR model. This ensures all important information is gained from the question being asked.
Situation or Task: Describes the context or background for the event of the tasks involved.
Action: Describes exactly what would be done or what was done.
Result: Describes the outcome of the candidate’s actions.
3. Make sure the questions are open-ended and clear and concise as well as free of jargon
Behavioural
• Draw from candidate’s actual behaviour during past experiences which demonstrate job-related knowledge, skills, abilities, or competencies.
• The underlying premise is that the best predictor of future behaviour on the job is past behaviour under similar circumstances.
Situational
• Present realistic job scenarios or dilemmas and ask how applicants would respond.
• The underlying premise is that people’s intentions are closely tied to their actual behaviour.