Build Your Tech Interview in One Afternoon

Most tech interviews are decided before the first candidate joins the call, by how much the interviewer prepared.

The good news is that preparing a structured interview doesn't take weeks. It takes one afternoon, maybe a day, and you only do it once per role.

Structure Is Now a Product Feature

Earlier this month, Greenhouse launched a set of new hiring tools ahead of HR Tech. One of them is a voice AI interview that "gives every applicant a first interview with the same questions and criteria".

I'm not here to argue about AI interviewers today. What caught my eye is what's being sold: the same questions and the same criteria for everyone. Thank you, Greenhouse!

That's the core of a structured interview. It isn't new, and you don't need software for it. It's a few pages you write before the first candidate shows up.

So here's how to write them yourself.

Why Most Teams Skip It

The US Office of Personnel Management has a plain guide to structured interviews. It says more structure goes with better predictions, more agreement between interviewers and less unfair impact on groups of candidates. A large 2014 review by Julia Levashina and colleagues looked at about 20 years of research and came to the same conclusion.

The same OPM guide also says something honest. Interviewers and candidates tend to prefer less structured interviews.

A free chat feels natural. Writing questions and a scoring guide feels like homework.

So teams skip the homework. Each interviewer brings their own questions and grades on gut feel. Then the debrief turns into a debate about whose impression is right.

Fair enough. So let's make the structured interview feel like an informal conversation.

The Plan, Step by Step

This is the order we follow at AssessDev for every role. The times are rough, so adjust them to the role.

Step 1. Hold a kick-off call (30 to 60 minutes)

Ask the hiring manager what this person will do every day. Then agree on 3 to 6 must-have skills and the level you really need. You don't always need someone exceptional. A mid-level back-end developer joining a team needs a very different bar from a CTO.

Step 2. Write 6 to 8 questions (about 45 minutes)

Aim for about 30 minutes of discussion, and link every question to one of the must-have skills. Start with a few quick "flash" questions that check the basics, such as "Name the application servers you know for your stack, and the biggest differences between them." Then go deeper. Add one bigger question that looks like a real problem from the job.

Step 3. Write down what a good answer sounds like (about 45 minutes)

For each question, write down what Fail, OK, Great and Exceptional look like. Take "How do you make sure a user and all their data are deleted for good?" OK cleans up the database records. Great also thinks of backups and outside services. Exceptional brings in legal and data privacy rules. Now two interviewers can grade the same answer the same way.

Step 4. Design a small live task (30 minutes to half a day)

Pick one small task that shows a skill the job really needs. Make it solvable in about 20 minutes, then give the candidate 30 to 45. Prepare 3 or 4 hints for the moments they might get stuck, and one special input that makes it interesting. There's more on this in Design a Live Coding Task in 4 Simple Steps.

A bit of fun helps too. We sometimes use data from a TV show people know, like Rick and Morty. Other times we use content from the insurance industry.

Step 5. Plan the clock

Say your interview is scheduled for one hour. Write the agenda with times: a short intro and ice-breaker, about 20–25 minutes of questions, about 30 minutes for the live task and a few minutes for the candidate's questions. Decide what you'll cut if you run late, so you still finish on time.

Step 6. Brief everyone who interviews

Every interviewer gets the same questions, the same scoring guide and the same AI rule. Agree that each person scores on their own, question by question, before anyone talks in the debrief. Once the first candidate has been interviewed, the questions don't change.

Step 7. Tell the candidate what to expect

Send a short email a few days before. Say how long the interview takes, the format, who will be on the call, the topics and whether AI tools or search are allowed. Share one sample question. Confirm the time and the link the day before. How to Prepare Your Candidates for a Tech Interview has more on what to send.

That's it. It's about three hours of work with a simple live task, and every candidate after that gets the same fair interview. If you only have an hour this week, do steps 1 to 3 for your next open role.

What I Do in My Own Interviews

Every interview I run follows the same three parts: intro, questions and live challenge. The structure is public on our site, on purpose. Knowing the shape of the interview doesn't make it easier. It takes away the guessing, so I see the candidate's real skill.

The preparation doesn't stop when the call ends. I take notes during every interview, then spend about 30 minutes right after it cleaning them up and writing the candidate's feedback. The written report is ready within 24 hours. That part is only fast because the scoring guide was written before the interview. I'm grading against something written down, so I don't have to remember how it felt.

A Quick Checklist

• We held a kick-off call and agreed 3 to 6 must-have skills.
• We know the level this role really needs.
• 6 to 8 questions are written, each linked to a skill.
• Every question has a Fail, OK, Great and Exceptional guide.
• The live task fits in 30 to 45 minutes, with hints ready.
• The agenda has times, and we know what to cut if we run late.
• Every interviewer has the same kit and scores alone first.
• The candidate got the format and a sample question in advance.

So, which step does your team usually skip: the scoring guide, the live task or the candidate email?

Sources

• Greenhouse. Greenhouse launches the Orchestrated Hiring Ecosystem to break AI's hiring doom loop. Press release, 15 October 2026.
• US Office of Personnel Management. Structured Interviews.
• Levashina, Hartwell, Morgeson and Campion (2014). The structured employment interview: Narrative and quantitative review of the recent literature. Personnel Psychology 67(1), 241–293.

This post first appeared in Shortlisted by Kat. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.

Skip the Afternoon

We do all of this for every role. That covers the kick-off call, the questions, the scoring guide, the live task and the report within 24 hours.

Is Interview as a Service Right for You?

Not sure where to start? Our free Buyer's Guide to Interview as a Service explains when handing your technical interviews to a partner makes sense, and when it doesn't.