Advantages of structured interviews during recruitment

January 28, 2023 Updated: January 31, 2024 5 min read

Why you should adopt structured interviews

Some companies don’t have a particular structure hiring approach when interviewing candidates. Although this seems easy and undemanding, it is not the best. It can lead to some problems such as bias in recruitment and making the interviewing process long.

Structured interviews have gained massive popularity in recent years, as they have several benefits. They make a recruiter’s work easy and help a company hire the best employees. Read on to learn more about the advantages of semi structured and structured interviews and how to adopt them.

What Is a Structured Interview?

A structured interview is an assessment method that measures the competency of candidates for a particular role by asking them the same questions and using the same criteria to evaluate their responses. Although companies have different approaches to conducting structured interviews, the process mainly involves asking questions that align with the skills and values the preferred candidates need to possess.

The pre-determined questions are set to assess the candidates’ skills and are typically asked in the same order. The responses of the candidates are gauged using a standard rating scale.

Using this approach, recruiters can conduct data-driven interviews rather than rely on their feelings and instincts. This helps promote conscious inclusion and diversity.

Advantages Of Structured Interviews

Structured interviews come with several benefits to recruiters and their organizations. Below are some of them.

They Create a Good Candidate Experience

Structured interviews ensure that candidates get a fair experience during interviews since they are asked the same questions, and their responses are evaluated using the same criteria. Additionally, by adopting this interviewing method, you show that your organization is conscious of creating an equitable workplace. This creates a good first impression and shows the candidates that they will have a good experience if hired.

A good candidate experience is key, even in the interviewing stage. A candidate’s experience during the first stages of interacting with your company can shape their decision to accept your job offer. When candidates have a frustrating experience, they can reject the offer, especially if they have other offers from other companies.

They Help Create a Diverse and Inclusive Team

Conducting structured interviews can help you create a diverse team. These interviews eliminate several biases, meaning candidates are hired based on their skills and competency for the job, not what an interviewer thinks about them.

Diversity and inclusion are crucial in any organization. Having employees from different backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences promote innovation and better decision-making. It also improves a company’s revenues.

Additionally, employees who work for companies that embrace diversity and inclusion are happier and more productive.

They Make It Easy to Compare Candidates

If several candidates have applied for a particular role, it can be difficult to determine the best. If not careful, you can end up rejecting the best candidates.

Structured interviews make it easy to compare job candidates. Since they all get the same questions, you can easily compare them by assessing their responses. That helps you select the best candidate for a particular role.

They Make the Hiring Process Fast

With increased competition for the best candidates, recruiters can’t afford to take an eternity before hiring. Instead, they should make the process as fast as possible.

Conducting structured interviewers is one way of making the process faster. Since you have predefined questions to ask every candidate, you don’t need to think about the questions to ask the candidates as you proceed with the interview.

Additionally, you can evaluate their responses immediately after the interviews, which doesn’t take much time since you already have a standard evaluation scale.

Although coming up with the questions and the scoring scale might be time-consuming, you will save ample time interviewing candidates. And you don’t need to keep coming up with questions every time. You might only need to make a few adjustments when needed.

The structured interviewing method comes in handy when several candidates are interviewed.

They Help Reduce Recruitment Bias

Recruitment bias is highly prevalent. Structured interviews help reduce these biases. Since candidates answer similar questions and their responses are assessed using a standard scoring system, the interviewer can focus on a candidate’s answers rather than whether they like them.

Recruitment bias is not good for any organization as it can lead to discrimination and legal issues. In addition, the best candidates who would have been of great value may be rejected.

They Help Recruiters Maintain Compliance

As a company, you can face legal problems when you hire someone for reasons other than their work competency and skills, and a candidate can also sue you for discrimination.

When you don’t have pre-determined questions to ask candidates, you may ask prohibited questions that cause you trouble. This can also lead to legal problems.

With a structured interview, the pre-determined questions are usually well-thought-of and don’t contain prohibited questions, which helps you maintain compliance and avoid getting into legal problems.

They Result in Better Hires

Conducting structured interviews leads to better hires since you already have clear expectations regarding the candidate you need. You know the skills you want your ideal candidate to have, and you also know the right questions to ask them and see whether they are a good fit for your organization or not. That increases your chances of getting the best hires.

Additionally, structured interviewing can help improve the interviewing process in your organization. This is achieved by reviewing the performance of your hires to see whether you chose the right candidates. You can then make the necessary adjustments to your hiring criteria to get the best hires in the future.

Summary

If you are still conducting an interview the traditional way without structure, you are missing out on the numerous benefits of structured interviews. Structured interviewing increases your chances of getting the best hires, promotes diversity and inclusion and also helps you maintain compliance. These interviews also make it easy to compare candidates and make the interviewing process faster.

At Clovers, we help you conduct structured interviews. From planning to conducting to scoring interviews, Clovers’s structured interviews add a layer of conscious inclusion to the selection process. To learn more about structured interviews, book some time with us to request your demo, or try for free today.

Jackie White headshot

Jackie brings over a decade of HR technology experience to Clovers. She’s passionate about helping companies build talented and diverse (dream) teams and delivering an incredible hiring experience to everyone involved.

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