The interview is often treated as the decisive moment in hiring; the point where someone is either in or out. From the first moment you see a candidate, judgement begins. Not deliberately, not even consciously, but quickly. Within seconds, impressions form, and once they do, they are difficult to change. That’s where many hiring mistakes begin; not in what is said during the interview, but in how early assumptions quietly steer the conversation.
And yet, the stakes are high. Even a mid-level hire can represent a $100,000+ annual investment, recurrent year after year. Despite that, many organisations approach interviews with less structure than they would a routine operational task.
This is where a simple intervention makes a disproportionate difference:
a pre-interview checklist.
Think of it like how pilots prepare before each flight and the goal is consistency in decision-making. For example, one decision to make upfront is whether candidates receive interview questions in advance. There’s no universally correct answer, but it should be a deliberate choice. Providing questions often leads to more considered, higher-quality responses. Withholding them may test spontaneity, but it can also reward confidence over capability. Either way, the panel should decide before the interview begins.
The same applies to your introduction and preamble to the candidate. Something as simple as acknowledging that the process is two-sided and that both parties are assessing their fit for the role. It invites honesty, reduces pretence, and ultimately leads to better information.
My favourite preamble is along the lines of, “I would ask you to be open and honest with your responses and in turn we will be open and honest to you. The recruitment process is a two-way process, and we are learning about you, and you are learning about us. It’s in both of our interests that if you were employed with us that it works out; it’s an important decision for both of us. Does that make sense?” Just be yourself. You don’t have to know all things to all questions and having areas for improvement is okay.”
But perhaps the most critical item on the checklist is this: actively suspend judgement.
It sounds obvious, but it’s rarely done well. Even experienced interviewers are susceptible to confirmation bias and forming an early view, then unconsciously looking for evidence to support it.
In an ideal scenario, the candidates would have already been screened and tested and that way you are only interviewing good candidates, which is easily the best selection process. But, it may also be the case that you are meeting a stranger and the only information you have is what they chose to give you. This is a bad selection process and whilst it will still identify good candidates, it will also identify bad candidates as good. But, regardless of whether the candidate has been screened or not, the panel needs to remind themselves to suspend judgements until the interview is over.
A checklist will reduce bias, and it reminds the panel that the goal isn’t to validate a first impression, but to reach a considered decision. In hiring, as in most complex decisions, structure isn’t a constraint, it’s a safeguard.
