The Interview Method Research Favors, and Most Managers Skip

Most hiring managers believe they can tell within a few minutes whether a candidate will succeed. Research on employee selection has tested that belief for more than half a century, and the results are humbling. The casual, conversational interview most managers prefer is one of the weaker predictors of job performance. A more disciplined version of the same interview is one of the strongest.

What the research shows

In 2022, Paul Sackett and colleagues published a reanalysis of the major meta-analyses on hiring methods in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Their work corrected statistical adjustments that had inflated some earlier estimates. In the revised rankings, structured interviews had the highest average validity of the selection procedures studied, at about 0.42.

Unstructured interviews scored far lower, at roughly 0.19. Job knowledge tests, work samples and general cognitive ability tests fell in between. The finding reinforced decades of earlier research, including the influential 1998 review by Frank Schmidt and John Hunter, which also found structured interviews substantially outperformed unstructured ones.

Validity in this sense measures how well a method predicts later job performance. No method is perfect, and even the best predictors leave much unexplained. But the gap between structured and unstructured interviews is large enough to change hiring outcomes across dozens or hundreds of hires.

What structure actually means

A structured interview has a few defining features. Every candidate for a role is asked the same core questions in the same order. The questions are based on a job analysis that identifies what the work truly requires. Answers are scored against defined standards, usually a rating scale with examples of weak, acceptable and strong responses. Interviewers score independently before discussing candidates.

The questions tend to fall into two types. Behavioral questions ask candidates to describe how they handled real situations in the past, such as a time they resolved a conflict with a coworker. Situational questions present a realistic scenario from the job and ask how the candidate would respond. Both work best when tied directly to the skills the job requires.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which oversees federal hiring, has long recommended structured interviews for these reasons and publishes guidance on how to build them.

Why managers resist

Structure can feel stiff. Managers worry that a scripted interview will miss the candidate's personality or prevent a natural conversation. Many trust their instincts and enjoy the freedom to follow interesting tangents.

The trouble is that unstructured conversations drift toward topics that feel good but predict little, such as shared hobbies, hometowns or similar career paths. Those topics favor candidates who resemble the interviewer, which creates both quality and fairness problems. Structure keeps the focus on the work.

Structure does not have to eliminate conversation. Interviewers can open with a few minutes of rapport building, ask follow-up questions to clarify answers and leave time at the end for the candidate's questions. The core evaluation simply follows a consistent plan.

Building a structured process

Start with the job. List the five to seven competencies that separate strong performers from average ones in the role. A current job description helps, and our guide to writing job descriptions explains how to identify essential functions.

Write two or three questions for each competency and define what strong, acceptable and weak answers look like. Train every interviewer on the questions and the scoring guide. Have each interviewer score alone before the hiring team meets, so the most senior voice does not set the tone for everyone else.

Finally, track results. Compare interview scores with performance ratings and retention after six or twelve months. Questions that do not predict anything can be replaced, and the process improves over time.

Faster as well as better

Structured interviews can also shorten hiring. Gem's benchmark data counted about 20 interviews per nontechnical hire in 2025. Clear scoring lets a hiring team decide after fewer rounds, which matters when strong candidates have other offers, a point we cover in our hiring speed guide.

A consistent, documented process is also easier to defend if a hiring decision is challenged, and it gives candidates a better experience. Applicants who feel they were evaluated fairly speak more positively about an employer even when they do not get the job, as we discuss in our candidate experience report.