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Structured interviews: Part of a recipe for hiring great people

By using structured interviews, you can gather four times the amount of accurate information compared to an inconsistent or conversational, unstructured interview.

June 23, 2016 by Jennifer Yugo, Ph.D. — Principal Consultant, Engaging Business Communications

Creating a memorable, delicious experience is foundational to your success. Regularly following procedures, steps of service, and recipes affect guest satisfaction, as well as the fidelity and strength of your brand. It is the people you hire, however, that execute your customer experience and build customer loyalty. What if you could follow a recipe to build a perfect team? You can. A huge part of that recipe is the structured interview.

A structured interview is a set of questions and a specific way of evaluating candidate responses. Interviewers using this method know exactly what to ask and how to evaluate candidate responses. By using structured interviews you can gather four times the amount of accurate information compared to an inconsistent or conversational, unstructured interview. 

While your managers are experts in execution and operation, they may have little to no exposure to human resources, hiring best practices, and human behavior. Structured interview guides reduce the time managers spend on the hiring process. This occurs because so much of the work is done for them (questions, how to evaluate each candidate). Additionally, manager confidence is increased because this process ensures they have enough job-relevant information about candidates to make a decision.

Ingredients for an effective structured interview

Understand your vision and culture. Have you defined the core values, beliefs, and expectations that are foundational to your business? In businesses that understand their vision and culture, managers and shift leaders are expected to teach, set transparent expectations for performance, and support the growth of their team members. This is core to who you are as a company.  If there's a strong focus on clear direction and feedback, team members may be expected to speak up when something is amiss, and give direct and sometimes upward feedback. Uncovering how someone would handle this is something to explore in the interview.  For example: "You've been on the job for a couple months and have specific ideas about how your manager could complete a task more efficiently. Do you share your suggestions? How?  Go through step-by-step how you would handle this situation."

Understand the job. What does someone meeting the expectations of the job look like?  What skills and abilities does someone need to meet the demands of the job? Think about why people leave and common reasons for termination. Let's say you are looking for someone to fill an hourly fast casual position that floats among several different roles – and new hires struggle to stay afloat.  You could ask: “Tell me about a time you had to learn many different tasks and responsibilities quickly.  How did you ensure you mastered the tasks and responsibilities? Give specific examples of what you did and the outcome.” Include ideas for probing, or follow-up, questions in the interview guide to dig deeper for more information from candidates.

Set a method for managers to evaluate each question. Give managers some guidelines for evaluating candidate responses.  For example, with the question about learning new tasks, if the person says “after the first week on the job I knew what I was doing” and doesn't give much detail about the strategies he or she used for mastery, that would be scored lower than someone who talks about asking for feedback, and reading materials in off hours. Each question could have several behaviors or responses you are looking for with a set scoring key. 

Set rules for determining if candidates passed the interview. You can use a scoring scheme where scores for each question (one to six, poor to excellent) are added and there's a minimum score to pass. Alternatively, you could use a “multiple hurdle” approach where each question or area of performance must be above a minimum score (like three on a six-point scale).

Train and support managers in using the interviews. Enforce using structured interviews just like you enforce other procedures and business operations. This process selects people who are the faces, hearts and hands of your brand. Check in with managers on how the interviews are working and make changes as needed.

Structured interviews are powerful tools that provide consistency in the hiring process. We know that many job candidates are also customers and providing a fair and positive hiring process influences their perception, and loyalty to and your brand. Ensuring consistent, job-related interviews also provides robust legal defensibility to refute a discrimination claim. Structured interviews require the support of your team and rich job-related content to support your brand. 

About Jennifer Yugo, Ph.D.

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