How to prepare and conduct an interview

Interviewing is the heart of the hiring process, yet many interviews are unstructured conversations that fail to provide actionable insights. This article explores how to conduct structured interviews that lead to better, data-driven hiring decisions.

By the end, you'll understand how many interviews are needed to make a hiring decision and how to strategise the objective and focus of each one.

What Makes a Great Interview?

A great interview is both structured and goal-oriented. It includes:

• Preparation: Clearly define the interview’s purpose and prepare questions tailored to the role and candidate.
• Structure: Follow a consistent framework, starting with an introduction, asking targeted questions, and concluding with a summary.
• Evaluation: Use standardised criteria to objectively assess the candidate’s responses.

Your hiring process should consist of three distinct interview stages:

• Phone Screening: A short call to confirm basic qualifications and availability.
• Primary Evaluation Interview: An in-depth conversation to explore the candidate’s qualifications, skills, and alignment with the role.
• Business Discussion: A strategic dialogue about the candidate’s approach to key objectives and their potential contribution to company goals.

This structured approach helps you gather the insights needed to make informed hiring decisions while reducing bias and unnecessary complexity.

Watch and Reflect: The Pitfalls of Poor Interviews

In the video below, you’ll see an example of an unstructured interview that fails to gather meaningful data.

Scenario: Michael is a candidate for a CEO position. While his track record includes notable successes, concerns about his leadership style and interpersonal dynamics have surfaced.

Self-check quiz

What went wrong with the interview?

1. The hiring manager focused on rapport rather than asking targeted questions.
2. Key issues such as Michael’s leadership approach and ability to handle competition were left unexplored.

Why Noise and Bias Undermine Interviews

Even seasoned professionals can fall prey to bias and noise during interviews. As Daniel Kahneman points out, decisions influenced by subjective impressions rather than structured evaluation can lead to poor hiring outcomes.

Behavioral Interviewing: A Proven Approach

Behavioral interviewing is a technique based on the premise that past behavior predicts future performance. Instead of hypothetical questions, candidates are asked to describe specific examples of how they’ve handled situations in the past.  

Why Behavioral Interviews Work

- Focus on Facts: Instead of abstract opinions, you gain insights into actual experiences.
- Predictive Power: Past behaviour in similar scenarios is a strong indicator of future success. 
- Reduced Bias: Structured, fact-based questions limit subjective impressions.  

Examples to help you structure your behavioural interviews:  

• Problem-Solving: "Can you describe a time when you identified a major problem in your team or organization? How did you handle it?"
• Leadership: "Give an example of how you motivated a team to achieve a challenging goal.

Additional Resources:

- A guide to behavioural interviewing

Watch and Reflect: A Better Interview Approach

In the next video, watch how an executive improves their interviewing approach by asking relevant, role-specific questions.

Candidate Specific Interviews with Wisnio

Interviews are only as effective as the preparation behind them. With Wisnio, you can take your interviews to the next level:  

- Interview Guides: Each candidate has a tailored interview guide based on their position competencies and assessment data. 

- Assessment Insights: Wisnio assessments provide detailed insights into each candidate’s competency strengths, behavioral characteristics, and key motivators, helping you prepare more in-depth and candidate-specific interviews.  

- WisGPT: Use AI-powered tools to analyze candidate profiles and generate behavioral interview questions tailored to investigate potential challenges.

Streamline your interviews, reduce bias, and make better hiring decisions with Wisnio. Sign-up today, it's free.

Self-check quiz

Self-check quiz

How many interviews should you do?

1. The more, the better.
2. 3-4 interviews are enough.

With structured interviews in place, it’s time to validate your hiring decisions through reference checking. Let’s explore how to conduct thorough reference checks in the next section.