Interviewing Candidates

Why structure wins

Free-form interviews feel more informative than they are. Two interviewers who spoke to the same candidate about different things cannot compare notes, and neither can compare that candidate with the next one.

Structure means a fixed set of core questions and a rubric describing what a weak, adequate and strong answer looks like. It does not mean a script; follow-ups should go wherever the answer leads. It means everyone is asked the same core things and judged against the same written standard.

The side benefit matters in practice: a structured process produces a record. When a hiring decision is questioned later, "we asked all four candidates these six questions and here is how they scored" is a different kind of answer from "she interviewed well".

Design the loop

Write down what each stage is for before scheduling anything. A workable shape for most roles:

Screen. Confirm the basics, the practical facts and mutual interest. Short.

Craft. Can they do the work? A practical exercise close to the real job beats abstract puzzles, and should be short enough to respect the candidate's unpaid time.

Experience. A structured conversation about what they have actually done, probing for ownership and detail.

Decision. Remaining doubts, and the candidate's own questions. Not another general round.

If a stage cannot be assigned a distinct question, remove it. Extra rounds cost you the candidates who have other options, and buy information you already had.

Questions that produce evidence

Ask about the past, specifically. "Tell me about a time you had to ship something with a constraint you disagreed with" produces a real story with checkable detail. "How would you handle a disagreement with a manager" produces a rehearsed hypothetical.

Then follow up until you reach specifics: what exactly did you do, what did other people do, what happened, what would you do differently. Strong candidates get more convincing as you go deeper. Invented answers do the opposite.

Avoid questions where the answer is obvious and only the delivery varies, and avoid brainteasers, which mostly test familiarity with brainteasers.

Scoring and deciding

Have each interviewer score against the rubric and write their reasoning before the debrief. Once the first opinion is spoken aloud, the room converges on it, and the debrief stops being an aggregation of independent views.

In the debrief, work from the written scores. Where they disagree, look for what one person saw that the other did not, which is usually more informative than the average.

Then decide, and decide quickly. A candidate who is right on a Tuesday is not more right by the following Monday, and may well be gone.