Hiring is one of the most consequential decisions a business makes. Get it right, and you bring in someone who grows with the company, lifts the team, and solves problems you didn’t even know you had.
Get it wrong, and you’re back at square one in a few months, having spent time, money, and goodwill on someone who was never the right fit.
Most hiring mistakes don’t happen during onboarding. They happen in the interview room, when the wrong questions are asked, or when the right questions are asked inconsistently, or when the panel walks out with gut feelings instead of evidence.
This article breaks down how to choose the right interview questions when hiring, what each question type actually measures, and how to build a scoring system that makes your hiring decisions defensible, consistent, and significantly better.
Why Most Interviews Don’t Work
The typical Kenyan interview goes something like this: a few pleasantries, “tell me about yourself,” some questions about the candidate’s CV, maybe one or two curveballs, and then a gut-feeling decision made over hot office tea afterward.
The problem with that approach isn’t effort. It’s structure. Unstructured interviews are notoriously poor predictors of actual job performance. They favour candidates who interview well over candidates who work well, which are not the same thing. They also expose you to unconscious bias, inconsistency across candidates, and the very real possibility of an Employment and Labour Relations Court dispute if a rejected candidate feels the process was arbitrary.
The solution is structure. And structure starts with knowing what kind of questions you’re asking and why.
The Two Must-Include Interview Questions When Hiring
When it comes to building a strong interview, two categories of questions do the most work: behavioural questions and competency-based questions. They are often confused with each other, but they measure different things, and both belong in a well-designed interview process.
Behavioural Questions: Past Performance
The logic behind behavioural questions is straightforward.
Past behaviour is the best available predictor of future behaviour. If you want to know how a candidate will handle pressure, find out how they’ve handled pressure before.
Behavioural questions are framed around real past experiences. They typically start with phrases like “Tell me about a time when…” or “Give me an example of a situation where…” or “Describe a moment when you…”
What you’re listening for is a complete, specific answer. Not a theoretical response about what the candidate would do in a hypothetical situation, but a real account of something that actually happened, what they did, and what the result was. Candidates who speak in generalities (“I usually handle conflict by…”) rather than specifics (“In my last role, there was a situation where…”) are often either inexperienced in the area or not being fully honest.
Behavioural questions work best when they’re tied to the specific demands of the role. A customer-facing role needs evidence of how the candidate has managed difficult clients. A finance role needs evidence of how they’ve handled errors or compliance pressure. A management role needs examples of how they’ve given feedback, handled underperformance, or navigated team conflict.
Examples of strong behavioural questions:
- Tell me about a time you made a significant mistake at work. What happened, and what did you do about it?
- Describe a situation where you had to deliver results under a tight deadline with limited resources.
- Give me an example of a time you disagreed with your manager. How did you handle it?
- Tell me about a time you had to work with someone who was difficult to get along with. What was the outcome?
- Describe a moment when you identified a problem that nobody else had noticed. What did you do?
The answers to these questions reveal how a candidate actually thinks and behaves, not how they perform under the artificial pressure of a hypothetical scenario.
Competency-Based Questions: Skills and Abilities
Competency-based questions are closely related to behavioural questions but focus specifically on whether a candidate possesses the skills, knowledge, and behaviours required for the role. Where behavioural questions ask about past situations broadly, competency questions are mapped directly to the competencies the job requires.
Before writing competency-based questions, you need to define the competencies the role demands. These typically fall into a few categories: technical competencies (the hard skills specific to the job), leadership competencies (for management roles), interpersonal competencies (communication, collaboration, stakeholder management), and problem-solving competencies (analysis, decision-making, adaptability).
Once you have your competency framework, you design questions that surface evidence of those competencies specifically.
For a finance officer role, relevant competencies might include attention to detail, regulatory knowledge, and analytical thinking.
Your questions would then be:
- Tell me about a time you caught an error in a financial report before it was submitted. How did you identify it?
- Describe a situation where you had to interpret unclear tax guidance and make a recommendation.
- Give me an example of how you’ve managed competing financial deadlines.
For a sales role, the competencies shift to client relationship management, resilience, and persuasion. Your questions follow accordingly.
The difference between a panel that asks “Are you good with numbers?” and one that asks “Tell me about a time you identified a discrepancy in a financial reconciliation and what you did about it” is the difference between an interview that generates opinions and one that generates evidence.
Examples of strong competency-based questions:
- Describe a situation that required you to analyse a large amount of information and make a recommendation. Walk me through your process.
- Tell me about a time you had to adapt your communication style to get buy-in from a difficult audience.
- Give me an example of how you’ve managed a project where the scope or requirements changed midway through.
- Describe a situation where you had to influence a decision without having direct authority.
- Tell me about the most complex problem you’ve solved in your career. What made it complex, and how did you approach it?
Developing a Scoring System for Your Interview Questions When Hiring
Questions without a scoring system are just conversation. The scoring system is what transforms your interview from an informal chat into a structured, defensible selection process.
Here’s how to build one:.
Step 1: Define What a Good Answer Looks Like Before the Interview
For each question, write down what a strong answer, an average answer, and a weak answer look like. This is called an anchor or a benchmark. Without it, each panellist is scoring against their own internal standard, which leads to inconsistent results and arguments in the debrief.
A strong answer to a behavioural question will be specific, structured, and outcome-focused. The candidate will describe a real situation, their specific actions, and a tangible result. A weak answer will be vague, hypothetical, or focused on what the team did rather than what the candidate personally contributed.
Step 2: Use a Consistent Rating Scale
A simple 1–5 scale works well for most interviews:
1— Well below expectations. The candidate gave no relevant example, and the answer demonstrated a significant gap.
2 — Below expectations. Some relevant content, but the answer was incomplete, or the outcome was poor.
3— Meets expectations. A solid, relevant answer with a clear example and acceptable outcome.
4 — Above expectations. A strong, specific answer with evidence of high-level thinking or impact.
5 — Significantly exceeds expectations. An exceptional answer that demonstrates exactly what the role demands at a high level.
Step 3: Score Independently, Then Debrief
Each panellist should score each answer before the group discusses. This prevents groupthink, where the most senior person in the room sets the tone, and everyone else quietly aligns. Independent scoring followed by a structured debrief surfaces genuine disagreement and leads to better decisions.
Where panellists score very differently, that disagreement is useful information. It often means the candidate gave an ambiguous answer, or that panellists are prioritising different things, which is a conversation worth having before the offer goes out.
Step 4: Weight Interview Questions by Importance
Not every question carries equal weight. If the role is a senior finance position, the questions mapped to financial competencies should count for more than the general communication questions. Assign a weighting to each question or competency cluster and apply it to your final scores.
A simple structure might look like this: core role competencies weighted at 60%, interpersonal and team competencies at 25%, and cultural fit indicators at 15%. Adjust the weighting based on what the role actually demands.
Step 5: Stick to the Evidence
When completing score sheets and discussing candidates, the conversation should stay anchored to the answers given. “I just didn’t get a good feeling” is not a scoring criterion. “The candidate couldn’t provide a specific example of managing a difficult stakeholder despite being asked twice” is a better reason. Train your panel to keep the debrief focused on evidence, not impressions.
Final Thoughts on Structuring Interview Questions When Hiring
A well-structured interview process looks like this: you define the competencies the role requires, you write behavioural and competency-based questions that surface evidence of those competencies, you brief your panel on what strong and weak answers look like, you score independently during the interview, and you debrief using evidence rather than gut feeling.
It takes more preparation than the traditional approach. But it produces significantly better hiring decisions, reduces the risk of a costly mis-hire, and protects you legally if a candidate ever challenges the outcome.
The best hire you’ll ever make isn’t necessarily the most impressive person in the room. It’s the person whose past behaviour and demonstrated competencies most closely match what the role actually demands. A structured interview process is how you find that person consistently, not occasionally.
Ready to build a hiring process that actually works? Bridge Talent’s HR specialists can help you design structured interview frameworks, competency libraries, and scoring systems tailored to your industry and team. Reach out today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some questions you may have about choosing your interview questions when hiring and gauging the answers provided:
How many questions should a standard interview include?
Aim for six to ten structured questions covering two to four competencies. Too many questions and you’re rushing through answers. Too few and you don’t have enough data points for a fair assessment.
Should we ask the same questions to every candidate?
Yes. Asking identical questions to every candidate is what makes comparison valid. Varying questions by candidate makes it impossible to compare fairly and increases the risk of unconscious bias influencing the process.
What’s the difference between a behavioural question and a situational question?
Behavioural questions ask about past experiences (“Tell me about a time…”). Situational questions ask about hypothetical scenarios (“What would you do if…”). Behavioural questions are generally stronger predictors of performance, but situational questions can be useful for junior candidates who have limited work history.
Can we use these techniques for internal promotions?
Absolutely. Internal candidates should go through the same structured process as external ones. It protects you from claims of favouritism and ensures you’re promoting on demonstrated competency, not tenure or familiarity.
How do we handle a candidate who gives very short answers?
Probe. Follow up with “Can you tell me more about your specific role in that?” or “What was the outcome of that situation?” A structured interview gives you permission to push for the evidence you need. Don’t accept a vague answer when a specific one is what the question is designed to elicit.
What do we do if a candidate has no direct work experience for a competency?
Ask them to draw on other contexts, such as academic projects, volunteer work, and community responsibilities. The absence of work experience is not the same as the absence of competency. A fresh graduate may not have managed a team at work, but they may have led a student association, run a community initiative, or coached younger students. That counts.
