How To Structure A Great Interview
By Xena Wang, Harvard Business Review, January 28, 2025
Picture this: You’re a manager seeking to fill an important position on your team. You’ve shortlisted a few people, but you’re looking for the candidate to give your final rose. Based on their resumes, you know each finalist is tech-savvy enough to perform well in the role. But you want the entire package: someone who will enhance your team, both in skill and in compatibility. You’re banking on the interview round to find the perfect match. The caveat? You’ve never interviewed someone before.
How do you prepare — and what questions do you ask to increase your chances of selecting the best person for the position?
How to Ace the Interview Process
The interview is the most critical stage in any hiring process, and it all boils down to preparation. Asking the wrong questions or not knowing what you want from a candidate can lead to bad decisions. You might end up hiring — then firing — someone who doesn’t match your needs, then be forced to waste time and money rehiring.
It’s also important to keep in mind that interviewing is a two-way process. Just as you are interviewing the candidate, the candidate is assessing you, the company, and the job. Arriving unprepared for an interview can impact how they view your professionalism. Even if the interviewee is ideal for the role, a poor presentation can deter them from wanting to work under you.
To avoid these pitfalls, you need to prepare in advance. That includes getting clear on the role, responsibilities, and what you’re looking for in a candidate; crafting smart questions to ask them; and doing your homework to be able to answer their questions.
Here’s how to get started.
Get clear on the role and responsibilities
Prepping for an interview starts as early as crafting the job description (JD). As you write out the JD, be specific about the responsibilities of the role and the skills required to perform them well — including any soft skills you’re hoping they bring to the team. If you need to fill a human resources role, for example, will you be looking for a benefits specialist, a performance manager, or a jack-of-all-trades? Write down all the “must-haves” a person needs to succeed versus the “nice-to-haves.” Whatever position you’re hiring for, this level of detail will give both you and the job applicants more clarity.
Once you begin assessing candidates, you may also learn more about what you’re not looking for. Pay attention to this, as it’s just as valuable as learning what you do want. For instance, you may notice that an applicant has several typos in their materials. This carelessness might be a red flag, particularly if you’re hiring for a role that requires that attention to detail. Or perhaps during the interview itself, a candidate mentions they prefer to work alone, but you know the position you want to fill is highly collaborative.
These are all things to pay attention to, even if you didn’t mention them in the job description. Based on your insights, you may need to adjust your criteria to make the best decision and attract the best candidates for the role.
Create a structure for the interview
Whether you conduct these interviews in person or virtually, individually or with a panel, make sure all parties follow a structured format. This ensures that each interviewee receives the same ordered questions and is assessed using the same criteria. It will be easier to compare each candidate’s responses this way and reduce the chance of bias.
As you structure your interview, also remember that good questions are open-ended and require more than a single-word response. They encourage elaboration and detail, providing helpful context for you to draw conclusions. You can frame open-ended questions by using “what,” “how,” and “why” to coax better answers (“In what ways would you consider yourself a hard worker?” vs. “Are you a hard worker?”). On the other hand, a not-so-great or closed-ended question might be, “While we encourage work-life balance, we do work very hard around here. Would you consider yourself a hard worker?” Most likely the person would just say yes, and if you’re lucky, you might hear another line about why they feel that way.
I recommend using the following structure to assess each candidate fairly: warm-up questions, abilities and qualification questions, behavioral questions, and workplace alignment questions.
Warm-up questions
While it may be tempting to jump right into the tough questions, remember to take a beat. You determine who gets hired, so it’s understandable that the interviewee is anxious given what’s at stake. Set the tone of the conversation by introducing yourself and asking warm-up questions — questions that help both the interviewer and the interviewee ease into the conversation — like asking them to walk you through their background or experience. In listening to the answers, you’ll be able to observe the candidate’s communication style and how effectively they articulate their ideas. You should also note how well-prepared the interviewee is as they tell you about themselves and why they’re interested in working at your company. Following these initial questions, you can then dive into more thought-provoking questions to gain a fuller picture of who they are and their potential to succeed in the position.
Abilities and qualifications questions
These questions let the candidate share what they’re great at, good at, or need improvement on. They allow you to analyze whether the candidate has the hard skills required to perform well in this particular role.
You can learn a great deal by asking open-ended questions focused on their technical abilities and how they’ve used them to solve problems in past roles. You can also ask the candidate how they might approach a challenging task in this new role.
For example, you might want to measure their proficiency in certain programs or tools: “Can you talk about a time when you used this software to analyze audience engagement data, and what your findings were?” or “What are some tools you’ve used to tide over a productivity crunch?” or “What has been your experience using Google Trends?”
Sometimes interviews require candidates to perform assessments demonstrating their technical skills. In those cases, you can omit asking skills-based questions yourself and allocate extra time to other areas.
Behavioral questions
Behavioral questions are essentially role-play scenarios: They gauge how people have or will respond in a situation. This is a great way to test a candidate’s soft skills such as communication, teamwork, adaptability, or critical thinking. Remember: While many technical skills can be developed over time, soft skills like resilience, self-awareness, and a growth mindset (or willingness to learn) are more challenging to teach. At a minimum, you also want someone with good emotional intelligence. As you listen to their responses, ask yourself, “Are they someone I would be comfortable — or dread — working alongside?”
Depending on what soft skills are necessary for this role, create questions centered around those themes. For example, you’re interviewing candidates for a client-facing role at a global company, which requires them to interact with culturally diverse people and also work with a multicultural workforce. To understand their cultural competence and public speaking skills, you could ask, “Could you walk me through how you’d communicate the company’s mission to a large audience comprised of non-native English speakers?” or “Tell me about a time you resolved a conflict with a remote team member.”
To further explore how individuals respond to setbacks and demonstrate accountability and integrity, you can’t go wrong with the following: “Tell me about a time you failed.” Really, you’re listening for how they made amends after the fact. It’s what’s not said that can sometimes speak volumes about who they are.
Workplace alignment questions
As a manager, you should have a firm grasp of your organizational dynamics and management style. This will make it easier for you to envision what kind of hire would best complement your team. Moreover, hiring a candidate whose values align with the organization can significantly boost an organization’s strategy, strengthen employee satisfaction, and reduce turnover, among other benefits.
Consider this scenario. Let’s say you’re a part of a burgeoning startup that encourages unconventional ideas. Calculated risk-taking is a key ethos among your crew, and your company prides itself on innovation and creativity. Therefore, as you interview candidates, you might focus on asking targeted alignment questions like “Describe an experience where you took risks to try something new in your personal or professional life. How did that play out?” or “Tell me about a time you had to make hard decisions in a high-pressure situation.”
You then find out that the candidate is quite cautious and prefers to consider all variables before taking any action. In fact, they might even admit they are actually risk averse. This insightful response doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on the candidate — rather, it demonstrates that the role isn’t a fit for either of your needs, and it’s best to part ways early.
Keep some time for what they may not have said
As you wrap up your interview, you can ask each candidate this closing question: “Is there anything I didn’t ask that you would have liked to mention?” This prompt is the candidates’ ultimate blank canvas. While this question still falls within a structured interview format, it gives the interviewee the chance to share anything they want.
They might mention aspects of their technical background that didn’t come up in your interview slate, talk about their hobbies, or give more context to gaps on their resume. They can also use this time to clarify any doubts they might have about the role or how they fit in. In short, you’re giving them a chance to paint a more intimate, well-rounded picture of who they are, personally and professionally.
Whether you host your interview in-person or virtually, strive for a structured format peppered with open-ended questions. This will encourage candidates to share thoughtful responses that help you gain insights into their skills and alignment. At the same time, prepare to answer their questions (including the less-conventional ones).
By following this interview framework, you can identify — and onboard — the best talent for your team.
Other interesting articles pertaining to how best to hire and manage great talent:
Will You Make Good On Your New Year’s Resolution? (HBR, January 2025)
3 Hiring Strategies To Build A Stronger Team In 2025 (Forbes, January 28, 2025)
How to Structure a Great Interview (HBR, January 28, 2025)
Research: Humble Leaders Inspire Others to Step Up (HBR, January 29, 2025)
Employment Is Changing Forever (HBR Ideacast, January 28, 2025)
Career Capital
Recent interesting articles pertaining to how best to manage one’s career:
Want a Raise in 2025? Start Your Wins List Now (WSJ, January 6, 2025)
Unemployed Office Workers Are Having a Harder Time Finding New Jobs (WSJ, January 6, 2025)
Why You Should Be Wary of the Unlimited Vacation Perk (WSJ, January 22, 2025)
Balance of Power Shifts Back Toward Bosses (WSJ, January 13, 2025)
How To Get, Grow And Feel Fulfilled In A Job That’s Right For You (Forbes, January 28, 2025)
Why You Should Use A Recruiter In Your Job Search (Forbes, January 27, 2025)
Mortgage Capital
Recent interesting articles pertaining to the mortgage industry:
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2025 will be a year of Non-QM player diversification (HousingWire, December 30, 2024)
Spiking Escrows Shock Unsuspecting Borrowers (NMP, January 22, 2025)
Another Trip Around The Sun (NMP, January 2025)
The CFPB continues to walk the financial beat, but for how long? (Scotsman Guide, January 24, 2025)
By Tallmadge Hill
January 31, 2025