Structured Interview Questions That Produce Comparable Evidence

By Don Georgevich

Phase Three of the Scientific Hiring Method: Discovery

A structured interview question should give every candidate the same opportunity to provide evidence about a capability that matters in the job.

The quality of an interview depends less on how clever the questions sound and more on whether they are connected to the work.

A strong question begins with a defined competency, asks for behavior or judgment relevant to the role, leaves room for a complete answer, and can be scored against a standard written before the candidate speaks.

Begin with the competency, not the question

Suppose the Job Scorecard says an Operations Manager must establish clear ownership across a small team. The company identifies influence without formal authority as an important entry capability.

The question should produce evidence about that capability. A general question about leadership may sound related but allow candidates to discuss almost anything.

OPM recommends selecting interview content from critical tasks and competencies identified through job analysis, then narrowing to capabilities that distinguish successful performers and are needed upon entry. See OPM’s competency-selection guidance.

Choose behavioral or situational evidence

OPM describes structured interviews as using questions about past behavior and proposed behavior in hypothetical situations. Both formats can be useful when they are based on job-related competencies and scored consistently. See OPM’s definition of structured interviews.

Build one question from beginning to end

Competency: Influence without formal authority.

Role situation: The Operations Manager must gain cooperation from department leaders who do not report directly to them.

Weak question: “Are you good at influencing people?”

The preferred answer is obvious, and the candidate can respond without evidence.

Behavioral question: “Tell me about the most difficult time you had to gain cooperation from people you did not manage. What did you need them to do, and how did you approach it?”

Situational question: “You join a small company where department managers agree that handoffs are broken but resist using one shared process. None of them report to you. How would you diagnose the resistance and gain enough support to test a change?”

Write the probes before the interview

Lead questions open the evidence. Probes complete it.

For the behavioral question, predetermined probes might include:

“Why were the people resistant?”

“What authority did you have?”

“What did you try first?”

“What did you change after receiving pushback?”

“Who ultimately decided whether to proceed?”

“What was the result?”

“What would those people say about your approach?”

OPM notes that highly structured interviews can use predefined lead and probe questions and score responses against proficiency benchmarks. See OPM’s structured-interview assessment guidance.

Define what the answer must contain

A question cannot be scored consistently until the company defines the evidence it expects.

For influence without authority, an acceptable answer may need to show that the candidate:

• Understood why people resisted
• Adapted the approach to the stakeholders
• Used evidence, testing, or shared goals rather than pressure alone
• Separated personal ownership from executive authority
• Produced a credible result
• Learned something that transfers to the current role

The Interview Rubric should then describe weak, acceptable, and strong evidence using behavior rather than adjectives.

Use clear, open-ended language

OPM recommends writing questions that are reflective of the job, tied to competencies, open-ended, clear, concise, understandable, and free of unnecessary jargon. OPM also suggests using prompts that ask for the most, last, worst, least, or best example because they encourage a specific event. See OPM’s question-development guidance.

Too broad: “Tell me about your leadership style.”

More specific: “Tell me about the most difficult performance problem you inherited on a team. How did you determine what was causing it, and what did you do?”

Too abstract: “How do you create stakeholder alignment?”

More concrete: “Tell me about a time two groups wanted different outcomes from the same project. How did you decide what to recommend?”

Avoid questions with the answer built in

Leading: “You would always speak with the employee before making a decision, correct?”

Neutral: “An employee’s results fall sharply for two months. What would you do before deciding how to respond?”

A neutral question allows the candidate to reveal judgment. A leading question reveals whether the candidate can recognize the answer the interviewer wants.

Avoid asking for several competencies at once

Overloaded: “Tell me about a project where you showed leadership, communicated with stakeholders, solved conflict, managed the budget, and met a difficult deadline.”

The interviewer cannot tell which part the answer demonstrates well, and the scoring becomes vague.

Choose the main competency and use separate questions or later probes for other evidence.

Seven structured questions by capability

Process diagnosis

“Tell me about a time you inherited a process that produced unreliable results. How did you determine what was actually causing the problem?”

Probe for facts gathered, assumptions tested, people consulted, and evidence that changed the candidate’s first impression.

Prioritization

“Tell me about a period when several important problems required attention at once. How did you decide what to address first?”

Probe for business impact, urgency, reversibility, tradeoffs, and what the candidate deliberately allowed to wait.

Influence

“Tell me about the most difficult time you needed cooperation from someone who did not report to you.”

Probe for resistance, authority, adaptation, and the role of other leaders.

Learning from failure

“Tell me about an important decision you would make differently today.”

Probe for the original reasoning, warning signs, consequences, ownership, and the change in later behavior.

Customer judgment

“Tell me about a time a customer wanted something that would have created a larger problem for the business.”

Probe for competing interests, communication, decision authority, and the final result.

Planning under uncertainty

“You receive responsibility for a project with an unclear scope, a fixed deadline, and no agreed owner for two critical decisions. What would you do during the first week?”

Probe for assumptions, dependencies, stakeholder involvement, risk, and the point at which the candidate would escalate.

People management

“Tell me about the most difficult performance problem you managed directly. How did you determine whether the issue was skill, clarity, motivation, capacity, or something else?”

Probe for expectations, evidence, feedback, support, consequences, and the final decision.

Score a sample answer

Return to the influence question.

Candidate answer: The candidate needed three department managers to use one project-status method. The managers resisted because each believed the shared method would reduce control over their team. The candidate interviewed each manager separately, identified the information each still needed, and created a two-week pilot that preserved local detail while standardizing the handoff status.

Two managers agreed. The third refused until the chief operating officer required participation. The pilot reduced missed handoffs, and all three managers continued using it after the trial.

Evidence supporting a strong rating: The candidate diagnosed the source of resistance, adapted the approach, used a small test, and produced a measurable result.

Reason not to award the highest rating yet: One manager participated only after executive direction. The interview should not overstate how much adoption came from the candidate’s influence.

Open question for references: How did the candidate work with the resistant manager after the mandate?

Pilot the questions before using them

Ask a knowledgeable employee or hiring manager to answer the questions aloud. Look for confusing wording, hidden assumptions, duplicated competencies, and probes that fail to complete the evidence.

OPM recommends having hiring managers, incumbents, or other knowledgeable people review questions and read them aloud. Its structured-interview guidance also recommends piloting and evaluating the interview process. See OPM’s Structured Interview Guide.

Keep the core stable after interviews begin

Do not replace a question because the first candidate struggled with it or add an easier version for a favored candidate.

If every candidate misunderstands a question, document the problem and review it carefully. Changes during an active comparison can damage consistency. Pilot testing before the search reduces this risk.

Keep every question job-related

The EEOC advises employers to limit pre-employment inquiries to information essential for determining whether a person is qualified for the job and warns against questions that reveal protected personal information. See the EEOC’s pre-employment inquiry guidance.

Ask whether the candidate can meet a stated job requirement rather than asking about family arrangements, medical history, age, religion, or another protected matter.

This page is educational and is not legal advice.

Turn the question set into an interview system

Use How to Conduct a Job Interview as an Employer to prepare the room, interviewers, timing, notes, and debrief. Use Structured Interviews for the complete method and the Interview Scorecard to record the evidence.

The supporting pages compare Structured and Unstructured Interviews, provide broader Interview Questions to Ask Candidates, and develop Behavioral Interview Questions.

Return to Discover What a Candidate Can Really Do for the full Phase Three path.

See the Scientific Hiring Method.