Interviews are the backbone of recruiting and it seems that they can vary, depending on what an external recruiter, TA professional, hiring manager or peer decides it can be.

At the scary low end we’ve got the phone interview, 10 minutes on the phone, cursory interview notes and away we go.

Let’s back up, I met a lady once who was going for a face to face interview at a large bank, she had literally never spoken to anybody, and this was a direct hire. They approached her, gave her a questionnaire and then asked her to come in. She never go the job but what a colossal waste of everybody's time.

All very odd even if you’re trying to recruit by volume. This lady was an IT person though so in my view there’s just no excuse for this lackadaisical approach, it’s disrespectful as much as anything.

Face to face interviews have been the mainstay of recruiting for years. Meet a candidate, wing it, ask a few questions, move on.

It still amazes me that fairly senior people in companies consider it acceptable to prepare for an interview which is a business meeting by……well….not preparing.

Now to structured interviews.

Defined as a prepared and pre-determined set of questions that can be scored for each candidate, that’s pretty much it. Interviewing is the tip of the human resources, behavioral iceberg and as in any relationship or human interaction you need to be certain you’re not on the Titanic hitting that iceberg. One misread, one missed social cue, one wrong glance and it can be over.

So, drumroll please, here are 7 key reasons to do structured job interviews.

1.      They’re about as objective as it gets. All candidates get asked the same questions and by applying a score to them along with recording the actual answers you can measure those responses if the questions are not closed ie requiring “yes” or “no” answers.

2.      They’re legally defensible. That objectivity largely eliminates any risk of an accusation of hiring bias. It’s also important that the candidate knows that the interview is structured to minimize the threat of a complaint after the fact. (https://blog.psionline.com/talent/proof-for-behavioral-interviewing)

3.      It takes 7 seconds to create that first impression and personal bias goes from there (https://www.businessinsider.com/only-7-seconds-to-make-first-impression-2013-4). If you don’t do structured interviews then you should really consider only interviewing candidates for 7 seconds, not 30-45 minutes (joke!!). One study (https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/how-many-seconds-to-a-first-impression) says that it only takes one tenth of a second!

4.      Multiple studies have shown that good looking people have an advantage at job interviews, promotions and even getting better grades at university. All of this helps to explain why I’ve always been a massive under achiever as I have a face made for radio. Blind interviews are pretty much impossible but making interviews objective instead of objectifying candidates is a must.

5.      Layer in sexism, agism and as John Lennon said “this-ism and that-ism” and you can pick your poison for what your bias is. One study even studied how biased people are in their bias and it’s very real so even if you see yourself as the perfectly objective arbiter of what is right, uh, you’re wrong.

6.      Improve the candidate experience. As recruiters, we should all strive to improve the candidate experience. I find that a quick 30 second overview of why we’re doing a structured interview really adds to the perception of value that Gateway adds to the candidate experience. I’ll take the win wherever I can.

7.      Improve recruitment productivity. It’s a lot easier going into an interview knowing what you’re going to ask. As an external recruiting resource, our clients also appreciate us getting to know them and their requirement a bit better before starting to interview.

In reality I think this blog post could have been titled “0 reasons to not do structured interviews” but the word count would have been dramatically lower.

Or maybe 997 reasons to do structured job interviews but again, the word count issue rears its ugly head.