Guidance

Use fair and structured interview techniques

Published 4 March 2026

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Purpose of this action

Fair and structured interviews can help you make better hiring decisions by reducing bias. They can help reduce disadvantages for women, including people returning to work after a career break (‘returners’).

You may want to choose this action if your organisation lacks diversity or representation in certain roles or pay grades, or if you have identified a lack of diversity in your interview shortlists.

Benefits and evidence

Structured interviews are more likely to lead to fairer outcomes for applicants compared to unstructured methods.^{[footnote 1]} They can reduce the impact of applicants’ characteristics on interviewers’ decisions, such as their sex.^{[footnote 2]}

Benefits of using a structured process can be that:

• you can easily compare responses across different candidates, interviewers, and departments ^{[footnote 3]}
• the process is clearer and more transparent for the interviewee
• panels may be more likely to pick applicants who meet the required performance standards^{[footnote 4]} – this could lead to fewer staff leaving
• using standardised processes may be more efficient – for example, interview panellists may need less time to prepare for interviews and score candidates

Prioritising job-relevant criteria can encourage fairness, consistency and transparency in selection. This can reduce the impact of gender bias in interviews,^{[footnote 5]} making it more likely that qualified women are appointed to roles that match their skills.^{[footnote 6][footnote 7]} This could help create a gender balance in higher pay grades over time, which may help reduce your gender pay gap.

By comparison, research suggests that unstructured interviews are often conversational and lack consistent questions or scoring.^{[footnote 8]} This may increase the risk of unconscious bias. Panels might favour people like themselves and overlook qualified and diverse applicants.

Implementing this action

 To create a fair and structured interview approach, consider the following steps:

1. Set up your panels

Prepare a panel with at least 2 people to make decision-making fairer. Include both men and women, and a mix of ethnic groups.

Make sure the panel knows their roles, the questions, and the scoring criteria.

2. Plan your questions

Develop questions that assess the skills and knowledge needed for the job. Ask all applicants the same questions in the same order. Keep questions concise or divide long, complex questions into smaller parts.

Review questions with a diverse group of people to make sure they are fair. You could consider views from your organisation’s diversity lead or taskforce if you have one.

3. Use clear scoring

Decide on ‘benchmark’ answers before you start the interviews. You might get answers you had not anticipated but which are still good. This is likely to happen if your applicants come from diverse backgrounds – they may have new ways of approaching things that you might not have considered. Allow your scoring criteria to be flexible enough to account for these.

Grade responses using standardised criteria as this may reduce the impact of bias.^{[footnote 9]}

4. Manage the process

Interview people in batches. Comparing people against each other in a group may help excellent qualifications stand out.^{[footnote 10]}

Tell applicants that you are using a structured interview. Allow interviewers and applicants to ask follow-up or clarifying questions when needed.

Ask interviewers to record and mark responses on their own before they discuss the results as a group.

5. Train your staff

Provide training on structured techniques for HR staff and hiring managers. You could make it compulsory for staff to complete training before they can join an interview panel.

For more guidance, see How to run structured interviews (Behavioural Insights Team).

Tracking progress

You might want to consider tracking the progress of this action by measuring:

• the proportion of hiring managers using structured interviews
• the breakdown of both shortlisted and successful candidates by sex – including the combination of sex and other characteristics (such as ethnicity or disability status) to highlight specific trends for different groups of men and women
• retention rates of new employees from targeted groups at particular milestones – for example, 12 months after starting
• surveys from candidates about their recruitment experience

You should also review your interview guides and training regularly.

Where possible, you should compare any data you gather with ‘baseline’ data from previous recruitment campaigns.

Data privacy

Some or all of the equality information you collect is likely to be ‘special category personal data’, meaning it has special legal protections. 

Ensure that you are complying with the UK’s data protection legislation when you collect and analyse employees’ data.

Get advice and approval from your organisation’s privacy or data protection expert before you start.

1. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers.  ↩

2. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers. ↩

3. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers. ↩

4. Kausel, E. E., Culbertson, S. S., & Madrid, H. P (2016). Overconfidence in personnel selection: When and why unstructured interview information can hurt hiring decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 137, 27-4. ↩

5. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers. ↩

6. McCarthy JM, Van Iddekinge CH and Campion MA (2010). Are highly structured job interviews resistant to demographic similarity effects?. Personnel Psychology, 63(2), 325-359. ↩

7. Bohnet I, van Geen A and Bazermann M (2016). When performance trumps gender bias: Joint vs. separate evaluation. Management Science, 62(5), 1225–1234. ↩

8. Levashina J, Hartwell CJ, Morgeson FP and Campion MA (2014). The structured employment interview: Narrative and quantitative review of the research literature. Personnel Psychology, 67(1), 241-293. ↩

9. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers. ↩

10. Bohnet I, van Geen A and Bazermann M (2016). When performance trumps gender bias: Joint vs. separate evaluation. Management Science, 62(5), 1225–1234. ↩