Structured Interviewing: Raising the Rigor of Selection

A highly structured employment interviewing technique, built on job analysis and standardized scoring, can raise the psychometric properties of the interview to the level of traditional cognitive aptitude tests.

For decades, the employment interview has been condemned by researchers as unreliable, invalid, subjective, and legally vulnerable. This study demonstrates that structuring the interview through six concrete steps—job-analysis-based questions, identical questions for every candidate, anchored rating scales, a trained interview panel, consistent administration, and rigorous attention to fairness and documentation—transforms the interview into a psychometrically sound selection device. In a field study of 149 entry-level production hires, the structured interview achieved high interrater reliability (r = .88), strong predictive validity (corrected r = .56), demonstrated fairness for minorities and women, and produced substantial economic utility. The technique's validity rivals or exceeds paper-and-pencil cognitive aptitude tests and far exceeds the traditional interview (mean r = .14), while offering managers an involving, defensible, and credible role in hiring. This is essential reading for anyone who selects employees and wants to keep the interview they love while giving it the rigor of a test.

The model it argues

A causal model in which interview design levers (job-analysis-based questions, question standardization, anchored scoring, panel rating, consistent administration, guideline adherence) produce standardization and job-related cognitive content, which raise the interview's psychometric properties (reliability, validity, fairness) and ultimately selection utility.

Key ideas

Job-Analysis-Based Question Development: The degree to which interview questions are systematically derived from a job analysis identifying important, prerequisite knowledge, skills, abilities, and other requirements at the appropriate job complexity level.
Question Standardization Across Candidates: The extent to which every candidate is presented with the identical set of interview questions, with no prompting or follow-up beyond repetition.
Example-Anchored Rating Scales: The presence and quality of a predetermined scoring system defining good, marginal, and poor answers for each question using concrete example responses scaled to job requirements.
Trained Interview Panel Rating: The use of multiple trained raters who independently record and rate each candidate's answers to reduce idiosyncratic bias and rating errors.
Consistent Administration Process: The uniformity with which the interview is delivered to all candidates, including a single questioner, no between-candidate discussion, note taking, equal item weighting, and a nonstressful setting.
Fairness and Documentation Guideline Adherence: The extent to which the interview process explicitly attends to job relatedness, fairness, and documentation per professional and legal testing standards.
Overall Process Standardization: The overall degree to which the combined design features produce a uniform, low-subjectivity selection procedure minimizing bias and contextual measurement error.
Job-Related Cognitive Content: The extent to which interview items tap job knowledge and general cognitive ability requirements at the appropriate complexity, functioning like an orally administered content-valid ability measure.