Job Interviews Can Be a Good Selection Device

The Economist magazine reports that job interviews are “the worst way to select people, except for all the others.”  One of the more encouraging surveys published in 2022 finds that structured job interviews have the most predictive value of any recruitment method, ahead of things like assessment centers or psychometric tests.  The word “structured” normally means a standardized set of job-related questions which are put to every candidate and each of which is scored according to an agreed system.  It is widely reported that an unstructured interview, in which hiring managers make questions up on the fly and reach decisions based on good instincts, have less than half the predictive validity of a structured one.  

On the other hand, having good interviews are not very good at predicting how candidates will do.  According to some studies, the research suggests that less than 20% of a person’s actual job performance can be attributed to scores in a structured interview.  So it makes sense to use other assessments as well as structured interviews.  The study suggests that a battery of measures might together be able to predict as much as 40% of a candidate’s eventual performance.

The lesson is that a structured job interview is a relatively good selection device, but it is not a cure-all. 

This article is part of our February 2026 Newsletter. 

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