{
  "title": "Selection interviews: what structure actually changes",
  "url": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/entretien-de-recrutement-ce-que-la-structure-change-vraiment-en",
  "language": "en",
  "datePublished": "2026-09-19",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "SHR — Swiss Human Resources",
    "url": "https://www.shr.swiss",
    "address": "Esplanade de Pont-Rouge 9A, 1212 Lancy, Suisse"
  },
  "summary": "Structured interviews are better validated than unstructured ones. Why, then, do they remain a minority practice? A reading of recent data and documented resistance.",
  "section": "Research",
  "topic": "Executive Leadership",
  "place": {
    "name": "Geneva",
    "region": "Genève",
    "country": "CH"
  },
  "keyPoints": [
    {
      "heading": "What the reviews establish",
      "point": "The review by Julia Levashina and colleagues (2014, Personnel Psychology) synthesises a stable finding: structured interviews — identical job-anchored questions, rated against a scale defined in advance — show higher predictive validity than unstructured ones."
    },
    {
      "heading": "An important revision of the magnitudes",
      "point": "Practitioners long cited the coefficients of Frank Schmidt and John Hunter (1998, Psychological Bulletin)."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Why structure remains a minority practice",
      "point": "Scott Highhouse (2008, Industrial and Organizational Psychology) described practitioners' resistance to structured procedures: the belief that personal experience allows one to 'read' a candidate, and the sense that a rating grid dehumanises the exchange."
    },
    {
      "heading": "What this does not license us to conclude",
      "point": "Structuring an interview guarantees no successful hire."
    },
    {
      "heading": "One practical implication, testable internally",
      "point": "A simple test before any redesign: take the last three executive hires and check whether two independent assessors had the same questions and the same rating grid."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "authors": "Hunter",
      "year": "1998",
      "source": "Psychological Bulletin"
    },
    {
      "authors": "Lievens",
      "year": "2022",
      "source": "Journal of Applied Psychology"
    },
    {
      "authors": "Highhouse",
      "year": "2008",
      "source": "Industrial and Organizational Psychology"
    }
  ],
  "wordCount": 323,
  "image": "https://www.shr.swiss/img/blog-editorial-2026-09-19-en.jpg?v=4",
  "translations": {
    "fr": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/entretien-de-recrutement-ce-que-la-structure-change-vraiment",
    "en": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/entretien-de-recrutement-ce-que-la-structure-change-vraiment-en",
    "de": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/entretien-de-recrutement-ce-que-la-structure-change-vraiment-de",
    "it": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/entretien-de-recrutement-ce-que-la-structure-change-vraiment-it"
  },
  "relatedPages": {
    "programme": "https://www.shr.swiss/formation/leadership-excellence/geneve",
    "city": "https://www.shr.swiss/formations-ville/geneve",
    "blog": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog"
  },
  "citationPolicy": "Citation autorisée avec mention « SHR — Swiss Human Resources » et lien vers l'article."
}