{"id":13,"date":"2025-10-30T19:33:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T19:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/?p=13"},"modified":"2025-10-30T19:33:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T19:33:04","slug":"reflections-on-interview-structure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/2025\/10\/30\/reflections-on-interview-structure\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Interview Structure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout my career, I have only participated in unstructured interviews, which tend to vary widely in their effectiveness. One example was for a scholarship for the graduate program at Oregon State University. I met with the interviewer one-on-one, and she asked conversational, open-ended questions about my past experience and future career plans. According to \u201c7 Practical Ways to Reduce Bias in Your Hiring Process\u201d (Knight, 2017), this style of allowing a candidate\u2019s experience and expertise to unfold organically can feel natural but is often unreliable for predicting job success and allows more bias to influence hiring decisions. Structured interviews, by contrast, minimize bias by focusing on specific factors that directly impact performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company I currently work for also used an unstructured approach when hiring me. I applied for the position even though I lacked the technical experience they were initially seeking. I met with a panel of top management who mainly described the role\u2019s responsibilities rather than asking competency-based questions. According to \u201cHow to Take the Bias Out of Interviews\u201d (Bohnet, 2016), managers should avoid group interviews because \u201cif you have four interviewers, four data points from four individual interviews trump one data point from one collective interview.\u201d Despite the process\u2019s low reliability and validity, the decision ultimately proved successful. The company took a chance, and over time, I have grown into my role and far exceeded the original expectations for the position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, I believe both interviews could have been more effective if structured, evidence-based methods had been used. Structured interviews make it easier to identify whether a candidate\u2019s natural talents align with the role and the organization\u2019s culture. As \u201cFirst, Break All the Rules\u201d (Buckingham & Coffman, 2014) explains, the best hiring decisions come from recognizing a person\u2019s strengths rather than focusing solely on experience. If my interviewers had used structured questions or work-sample tests, they would have gained a clearer picture of my abilities and potential. They also would have seen my willingness to learn, which \u201cHow to Get a Job at Google\u201d (Friedman, 2014) notes is often a stronger predictor of future success than past experience. A more structured approach would have helped the interviewers make more informed decisions and given me a better opportunity to demonstrate my potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friedman, T. (2014). How to get a job at Google<\/em>. The New York Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bohnet, I. (2016). How to take the bias out of interviews<\/em>. Harvard Business Review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buckingham, M., & Coffman, C. (2014). First, break all the rules: What the world\u2019s greatest managers do differently<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knight, R. (2017). 7 practical ways to reduce bias in your hiring process<\/em>. SHRM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout my career, I have only participated in unstructured interviews, which tend to vary widely in their effectiveness. One example was for a scholarship for the graduate program at Oregon State University. I met with the interviewer one-on-one, and she asked conversational, open-ended questions about my past experience and future career plans. According to \u201c7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14948,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/corymba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}