Qu'est-ce que Unstructured Interview ?

Definition

An unstructured interview is a recruitment conversation that unfolds organically without predetermined questions or standardised scoring criteria. The interviewer follows the candidate's responses, exploring areas of interest as they arise. It resembles a professional conversation more than a formal evaluation.

In practice

Unstructured interviews remain the most common form of employment interview despite having the lowest predictive validity of all selection methods (r ≈ 0.20 for predicting job performance, versus 0.51 for structured interviews). They are prone to all major cognitive biases — confirmation, halo, affinity, primacy and recency effects — because their lack of standardisation gives bias maximum room to operate. They also produce results that are very difficult to compare across candidates. Their persistence is partly cultural (they feel more natural and less threatening) and partly practical (they require no upfront investment in question design). For low-stakes, junior roles they may be adequate; for significant hiring decisions, they should always be supplemented with structured components.

Key takeaway

The unstructured interview is comfortable to conduct but unreliable as a decision tool — use it to build rapport and assess cultural fit, not as the primary basis for a hiring decision.