Every new employee plays a crucial role in an organization’s success- from boosting team morale to maximizing productivity. However, hiring new employees also comes with a price. It can cost your firm between $4,000 and $20,000 per new hire, depending on the seniority of the position and the location of your company.
The importance of hiring the right individual cannot be understated. Especially when you consider that over 3 in 4 senior managers (76%) admit to hiring the wrong candidate for a position.
Talent acquisition has undergone many changes with the evolving business landscape, and it is vital to adapt to create a robust recruitment plan for your organization. A strong hiring strategy uses objective evaluation methods to reduce bias and select the most suitable candidate. To reduce the risk of bad hiring, many companies make candidates go through several rounds of interviews, which can be highly time-consuming and taxing. Instead, companies should opt for structured interviews, which are considered a high validity method in evidence-based hiring.
This article will help you understand what constitutes a structured interview strategy, the benefits of this type of evaluation, and how you can use FloCareer to improve your recruitment efforts.
What is a structured interview?
A structured interview is a standardized interview format where each candidate is evaluated using the same questions. These questions are also asked in the same order, which helps reduce the context effect. This fixed flow allows each candidate’s response to be compared objectively and scored using a predetermined scale.
These interviews include technical and situation-based questions to assess an interviewee’s skills. FloCareer’s structured interview strategy includes thousands of questions that are crowdsourced from experts to keep them relevant and engaging.
Structured interviews can be conducted face-to-face, over the telephone, or virtually- in the case of the automated digital option, candidates are given the same amount of time to answer each question. FloCareer’s 3,000+ interviewers can help you conduct structured interviews with the added advantage of not having location or time-specific constraints.
There are many benefits of structured interviewing that make them attractive to hiring managers. The following section will highlight how this type of interviewing can benefit your firm.
What are the benefits of a structured interview?
More objectivity
Too often, interviews pick a candidate based on their instinct or “gut”; however, this is usually a bad idea as it can lead to many types of hiring bias. The first benefit of structured interviews is the objectivity they provide. By having a standardized set of questions for all interviewees, there is less room for common hiring bias. Having a predetermined question bank and assessment scale in place also helps retain objectivity and transparency when multiple interviewers are part of the recruitment process.
Saves time
Having a predetermined interview flow in place means hiring managers don’t have to do additional work to prepare before speaking to each candidate. An interview structure also allows the conversation to flow more smoothly, with less time wastage. Research by Google found that having high-quality question guides and rubrics in place saved its hiring managers an average of 40 minutes per interview.
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Better hires
To create an interview structure, hiring managers must first outline the responsibilities and expectations of the position. This preparation allows the recruitment team to be fully apprised of the skills that the new employee should have and the impact that this role has on the organization.
By providing clarity and alignment, structured interviews leave less room for favoritism or personal bias and help recruiters make better choices during the interview process. Moreover, since hiring and training employees is a time and money-consuming process- US firms spent $92.3 billion in 2020-2021 on training efforts- it’s in the firm's interest to make the better decision in the first go.
Hire diverse teams
More than 76% of employees and job seekers state that a diverse workforce is a notable factor when deciding between companies and job offers. In today’s competitive hiring market, companies must strive to create diverse teams to attract better talent and be more representative of their customer demographics.
An unstructured interview leaves space for many types of hiring bias based on race, gender, age, or sexual orientation, resulting in more homogenous teams. Having structured interviews in place that use the same questioning framework for all applicants, regardless of their background, reduces the chances of such discrimination and helps firms achieve their diversity goals.
Another way to further reduce hiring bias is to use FloCareer’s JD to CV Match service, which uses AI to screen resumes for a job. This technology helps reduce bias made on ethnicity, age, or gender, which is still very common: a recent study by the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago found that applications from candidates with a “Black name” got fewer responses than similar applications with a “white name.”
Provide legal protection
Since structured interviews treat all candidates the same way, they reduce discrimination and recruitment bias. These types of interviews also provide documentation of the hiring process, if it is ever questioned, and are thus more defensible in court.
Improving your recruitment model
Structured interviews are more than just a pre-set question bank; they are an effective tool that can lead to objective and skill-based hiring and a more diverse workforce. In addition, by making the process standardized, transparent, and bias-free, they better an organization's hiring efforts and protect it from lawsuits.
Using FloCareer’s interview structuring service is an efficient and reliable way to improve your interview process. Our live interview platform also allows you to include images, presentations, or videos as part of the interview questions. These features allow for a more thorough assessment of candidates by presenting scenarios they could face if they secured the position.
By having an interview structure in place, you can hire a better team and improve your recruitment efforts in the long term. Analyzing the performance reviews of recent hires can help you determine if you selected the right candidate, which can further help you identify gaps in your interview process, e.g., if a specific question is useful to determine success in a position.
Don’t waste more time before upgrading your recruitment efforts- sign up for a free live demo of FloCareer today!
