Two candidates may walk into interviews with identical qualifications and experience. Yet, their outcomes can be vastly different. Not because of merit, but because they faced different interviewers.
Why Consistency Matters
In hiring, this inconsistency is more than an inconvenience — it is a serious weakness that reduces fairness and clouds decision-making.
What the Research Reveals
Campion and colleagues (1997, Personnel Psychology) showed that unstructured interviews had alarmingly low reliability, with results swinging depending on the interviewer’s personal style. Moscoso (2000, International Journal of Selection and Assessment) observed that some interviewers consistently rated candidates more leniently while others were harsher, regardless of actual performance. Schmidt and Hunter (1998, Psychological Bulletin) went further, demonstrating that structured interviews are far stronger predictors of job performance than unstructured ones. The message is clear: inconsistency is not accidental, it is systemic when interviews lack structure.
A Tale of Two Interviews
Think of it this way. Candidate A is asked broad, open-ended questions like, “Tell me about yourself.” Candidate B, interviewing for the same role, faces pointed questions linked directly to job requirements. Candidate A’s outcome will depend heavily on personality and rapport; Candidate B’s outcome will depend on demonstrable competence. These are not two versions of good practice. They are two entirely different processes producing results that cannot be compared.
The Organisational Cost
When hiring becomes dependent on chance, organisations lose. Strong candidates can be rejected for the wrong reasons, while less-suitable ones may be advanced because they clicked with a particular interviewer. This inconsistency weakens workforce quality, increases attrition, and damages the credibility of the recruitment process. It also leaves candidates frustrated, with the impression that fairness depends more on luck than on ability.
Towards Reliable Hiring
The answer lies in structure. Consistency in questioning, transparent scoring, and comparable benchmarks ensure that every candidate is measured against the same criteria. Recruiters still bring judgement and experience, but within a framework that allows decisions to be fair, defensible, and predictive of performance. In doing so, organisations move from subjective guesswork to reliable hiring.
