Interview Guide

An APS Custom Interview Guide is a structured, evidence-based interviewing tool designed to help organisations assess candidates against the specific skills, behaviours, and success factors required for a particular role and business context during their recruitment process.

Aligned to organisational competencies and drawing from psychometric data (typically a combination of Hogan personality and cognitive ability assessments), it supports a structured and consistent approach for recruiters or hiring personnel.

The guide includes targeted questions and probes that enable interviewers to gather clear, behavioural evidence of how individuals have applied their skills and experience in real work situations.

Our Approach Implementation Participant Experience

Our Approach

We recognise that every organisation is unique. That’s why our approach to developing a custom interview guide is flexible and tailored—steps are selected and adapted based on your specific needs, context, and objectives. The following outline illustrates the types of steps that may be included in a typical engagement, but each project is bespoke and elements can be chosen to suit your requirements:

1. Discovery and Understanding

We start by learning about your organisation’s culture, values, and the role you’re recruiting for. We review your existing frameworks and consult with key stakeholders to clarify what success looks like for you.

2. Co-creation with Stakeholders

We can facilitate workshops or focus groups with your HR team, hiring managers, and subject matter experts.

This ensures the interview guide is practical, relevant, and uses your organisation’s language.

3. Evidence-Based Design

The guide may be built around structured, competency-based questions, designed to elicit real examples from candidates.

Probing follow-up questions and clear scoring rubrics can be included to support consistency and fairness.

4. Pilot and Refine

If helpful, we can pilot the guide with a small group of hiring managers and use their feedback to refine it, ensuring it’s user-friendly and effective.

5. Training and Support

APS can provide training or briefing sessions for your hiring managers, focusing on how to use the guide, probe for evidence, and avoid bias.

Ongoing support is available to ensure the guide continues to meet your needs as your organisation evolves.

6. Review and Update

After the guide has been in use, we can review its effectiveness together and update it as needed to reflect any changes in your requirements or priorities.

Customisation:

Click the headings to find out more, or contact us to explore bespoke options.

Implementation

Design:

When designing a structured interview guide, the content typically includes a summary of assessment results, clearly defined job-relevant behaviours and competencies, validated score ranges, and fit recommendations. It also features targeted, evidence-based questions that probe for observable behaviours, and guidance on interpreting candidate responses. This ensures every candidate is assessed consistently, with a focus on the most predictive factors for success in the role, and provides a robust, fair, and practical framework for making final hiring decisions.

Implementation:

When implementing a structured interview guide, the process involves briefing interviewers on the purpose and structure of the guide, ensuring all assessors are familiar with the job-relevant behaviours and competencies being measured, and providing clear instructions on how to use the guide during interviews. Interviewers are equipped with targeted, evidence-based questions and scoring rubrics, and are encouraged to record candidate responses and observations in a consistent manner. The guide is used to structure the flow of the interview, ensuring each candidate is assessed against the same criteria, and that responses are documented to support fair, objective, and evidence-based hiring decisions. Organisations may prefer to do this themselves or involve APS.

Review:

It is good practice to periodically review an interview guide. The process involves carefully analysing the effectiveness of each question and competency area, checking for clarity, relevance, and alignment with the role requirements, and ensuring that the guide remains up to date with current best practice and organisational needs. This may include refining behavioural indicators, updating or rewording questions for greater precision, adjusting scoring rubrics, and incorporating feedback from interviewers or recent hiring experiences. The aim is to enhance the guide’s ability to generate consistent, objective, and meaningful evidence about candidates, while minimising ambiguity or bias.

Participant Experience

✅ Candidates more likely to perceive the approach as professional, consistent, unbiased and transparent which can enhance brand.

✅ Easier to compare candidates and reach consensus in selection discussions.

✅ Increased Hiring Manager confidence using professional system, particularly if an irregular occurance.