The benefits of structured interviewing, including increased predictive validity and reduced adverse impact, have been well documented by academic research over the last 20 years.

• Structured interviews result in increased predictive validity and decreased differences between demographic groups.
• Structured assessment tools (what the researchers call “behaviorally-anchored rating scales,” and what Google calls “rubrics”) are more predictive than unstructured interviews.

In a structured interview, well-trained interviewers ask a set of planned, rigorous, and relevant interview questions and use a scoring guide to make sure their interview ratings are accurate.

Dr. Melissa Harrell, a hiring effectiveness expert on the Google People Analytics team, notes:

"Structured interviews are one of the best tools we have to identify the strongest job candidates (i.e., predictive validity). Not only that, they avoid the pitfalls of some of the other common methods."

Structured interviews tend to be more fair to diverse groups of candidates and candidates like them better than personality assessments.