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Why Structured Interviews Beat Gut Feel · The Science of Leading

• 0:00
  Welcome to the show.
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  I'm Claire Monroe with Edwin Carrington-and I want to start with
• 0:00
  something
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  that's... mildly uncomfortable.
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  Most interviews?
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  They're basically confidence tests.
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  Like-who sounds sharp, who tells a clean story,
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  who makes you feel like, "yeah,
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  this person gets it." And somehow that feeling turns into a hiring decision...
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  even though confidence and competence are not the same thing.
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  They're not
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  even strongly correlated in many cases.
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  What you're describing is a very reliable pattern.
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  Unstructured interviews tend to reward three things: charisma,
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  similarity, and narrative fluency.
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  We call it "gut feel" because that sounds respectable,
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  but most of the time it's just bias behaving politely."Bias behaving
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  politely" is... yeah, that's going to stick.
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  Because that's confirmation bias,
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  right?
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  You like someone early-minute three,
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  maybe-and then the rest of the interview turns into this quiet little
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  mission to prove you were right in the first place.
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  Exactly.
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  The decision starts forming before the evaluation does.
• 1:01
  And from that point on, you're not really assessing the candidate-you're
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  defending a conclusion you haven't fully examined yet.
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  Which is kind of
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  unsettling, because everyone in that room would swear they're being objective.
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  So this is where structured interviews come in?
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  Yes,
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  and the purpose is very specific.
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  Structure isn't about making interviews rigid.
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  It's about making them comparable.
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  Same questions, same criteria,
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  same scoring logic.
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  You decide what matters before the conversation begins instead of improvising
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  your standards halfway through it.
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  I think that's where people get hung
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  up.
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  "Structured" sounds stiff, like you're turning a human conversation into
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  a checklist.
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  But without it, you're basically running three completely different interviews
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  and pretending they're comparable.
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  That's exactly what's happening.
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  If Candidate A is asked about conflict,
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  Candidate B about strategy, and Candidate C about whatever came to mind
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  after lunch, there is no shared basis for comparison.
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  At that point, you're not evaluating performance potential-you're evaluating
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  who gave the most compelling conversation.
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  Which is a completely different
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  skill.
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  And not the job.
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  Correct.
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  The job is prediction.
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  Can this person perform in this role,
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  under these conditions?
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  And the research trend is quite consistent here-structured interviews
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  reduce noise, improve fairness,
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  and are simply better predictors of performance than informal ones.
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  That
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  phrase-predicting performance-feels like the part most teams skip over.
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  Because the default question is still,
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  "did I like this person?" not "did I gather useful evidence?"And here's
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  the practical challenge: most interviewers believe they're already good
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  at interviewing.
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  That's the hardest audience to retrain-the confident amateur.
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  If you suggest their instincts might be misleading them,
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  it feels personal, even though it's really just a cognitive limitation
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  we all share.
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  So it's less about fixing the process and more about getting
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  people to admit the process might be flawed in the first place.
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  Yes,
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  but once that shift happens, interviews usually become easier.
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  Less wandering, fewer repeated questions,
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  less debate based on vague impressions.
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  A solid framework-something OAD has explored in depth-actually reduces
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  effort because interviewers know what they're looking for and how to evaluate
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  it.
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  So instead of trying to become some kind of human lie detector,
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  you just build a system that doesn't rely on that.
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  Exactly.
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  Better system, better evidence,
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  better decisions.
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  Okay, let's make that concrete.
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  OAD uses three core attributes: role-related knowledge,
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  problem solving, and leadership.
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  Sounds simple, but I feel like people interpret those very differently.
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  They
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  do.
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  Role-related knowledge is the practical understanding of the work itself.
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  Problem solving is how someone navigates ambiguity,
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  constraints, and trade-offs.
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  And leadership is where most teams get imprecise.
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  It's not limited to management roles.
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  Right,
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  because leadership for an individual contributor might look like influencing
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  decisions or taking ownership, not managing people.
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  Exactly.
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  An individual contributor shows leadership through judgment,
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  initiative, and influence.
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  A manager shows it through coaching,
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  delegation, and creating clarity.
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  If you don't define that properly,
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  you risk filtering out strong candidates for the wrong reasons.
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  Like expecting
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  a senior engineer to sound like a VP,
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  and then deciding they're "not leadership material."Precisely.
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  And that's where question design becomes critical.
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  Behavioral questions ask for real evidence-what someone has actually
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  done.
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  Hypothetical questions explore judgment-what they would do.
• 4:43
  Both are useful, but neither works if you accept the first polished answer
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  at face value.
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  Because people rehearse.
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  "I collaborate, I communicate,
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  I prioritize..." That's not insight,
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  that's just... corporate wallpaper.
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  Exactly.
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  Which is why structured follow-ups matter.
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  Not random pressure, but intentional probing.
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  What options did you consider?
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  What data did you use?
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  What trade-offs did you face?
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  Now you're evaluating thinking,
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  not just storytelling.
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  So the real signal shows up after the first answer,
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  not in it.
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  That's where most of the useful information is,
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  yes.
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  Let me try to sharpen that.
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  A weak question is "Are you good under pressure?" because the answer
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  is obviously yes.
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  A better one is "Tell me about a time you worked under pressure." And
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  then you go further-what happened,
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  what did you choose not to do,
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  what would you change now.
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  That's a strong direction.
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  I'd make it even more role-specific.
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  For a manager: tell me about a time your team was at risk of missing
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  a critical deadline and how you responded.
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  For an individual contributor: tell me about a time you influenced an
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  outcome without formal authority.
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  Specificity leads to better evidence.
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  And probably a better experience
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  for the candidate too.
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  It feels more relevant, less random.
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  Exactly.
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  Candidates can tell when a process is structured.
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  It feels more coherent, more deliberate.
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  And the final layer is discipline after the interview-shared rubrics,
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  independent scoring, and calibration before discussion.
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  Without that, the loudest voice in the room still shapes the outcome.
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  So
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  the takeaway isn't "trust your instincts more." It's define what matters,
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  standardize the questions, score consistently,
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  and stop equating a good conversation with a good hire.
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  That's a more
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  accurate framing.
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  And if someone's listening to this thinking,
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  "this sounds great, but implementing it feels like a lot..."That's where
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  tools can help.
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  If you're looking to operationalize structured hiring-things like consistent
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  frameworks and behavioral assessments-OAD offers a practical starting
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  point.
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  So you're not building the whole system from scratch and hoping
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  people stick to it.
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  Exactly.
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  And if you're wondering how to put this into practice,
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  you can test OAD's tools-like behavioral assessments-for free at o-a-d-dot-a-i.
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  It's a straightforward way to make your hiring process more consistent
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  and more predictive.
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  Which, at this point,
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  feels like the real goal.
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  Not just a good conversation-but a better decision.
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  Thanks for listening to The Science of Leading.