Stephen Turner
Akash Kumar
Jordan Lee
Taylor Scott
Recruiter and hiring-manager meetings: structured interviews
A recruiter's meetings form a chain. The intake meeting defines what the role needs, interviews collect evidence against it, and the debrief turns that evidence into a decision. Structured interviewing keeps the chain consistent: same questions, same scoring scale, and decisions based on notes, not overall impressions.
What makes an interview structured
The US Office of Personnel Management defines a structured interview as one that measures job-related skills through systematic questions about past behavior or hypothetical situations. Every candidate gets the same questions in the same order. Every answer is rated on the same scale and standards.
Google's re:Work guide describes the same practice. It reports that Google found structured interviews predict job performance more accurately than unstructured ones. It also warns that interviewers tend to look for evidence that confirms their first impression, which psychologists call confirmation bias.
The intake meeting: agree what you're assessing
Most interview problems start at intake. Before booking any candidates, the recruiter and hiring manager agree a few key competencies. They decide which interview covers each one and what each interviewer will ask.
For each question, write down what a poor, borderline, solid and outstanding answer looks like. re:Work describes Google documenting examples at those four levels.
Leave with a scorecard, not just a job description. If the hiring manager can't say what a strong answer sounds like, each interviewer will invent their own standard.
| Competency | Question (fictional) | A solid answer includes |
|---|---|---|
| Prioritization | Tell me about a week when you had more requests than time. What did you do? | The competing requests, how they ordered them, and how they explained the trade-off |
| Stakeholder communication | Describe a time you had to deliver news a stakeholder did not want. | A specific situation, how they prepared, what they said, and what happened next |
| Role skill | Walk me through how you would plan the first month of this role. | Ordered steps tied to the role's goals, and what they would check first |
During the interview: ask, probe, write it down
Ask the agreed questions in order. Use neutral follow-ups to get specifics: what the candidate did, why and what happened. re:Work encourages detailed notes on each answer so they can be reviewed later.
Write down what the candidate said, not adjectives about them. “Reordered three requests by deadline and told each requester the new date” is evidence. “Seemed organized” isn't.
Score each answer against the scorecard soon after the interview, before you talk to the rest of the panel. That way one strong opinion doesn't set everyone's scores.
The debrief: compare evidence, then decide
Go competency by competency. Each interviewer shares their score and the notes behind it. Settle disagreements by looking at what the candidate actually said.
The hiring manager decides against the criteria agreed at intake. The recruiter records the outcome, the reasons and follow-ups such as reference checks. If the criteria turn out to be wrong, change them for future candidates, not for this one.
Using Bridge for interview notes
If you record interviews in Bridge, a custom recap template can shape the notes around your scorecard, with one heading per agreed question. Share the notes with named panel members by email, not the whole workspace.
Tell candidates the interview is recorded and why. Follow your company's rules on consent and how long candidate data is kept. The notes support each interviewer's evidence; scores and hiring decisions stay with people.