For founders and hiring managers
The Structured Interview System
Structure is what makes hiring decisions comparable. This is the full system — competencies, scorecards, loops and decisions — with the working documents to run it.
Terra Talent
The Structured Interview System
A practical system for evaluating people consistently without turning hiring into bureaucracy.
Structure is what makes hiring decisions comparable. This is the full system — competencies, scorecards, loops and decisions — with the working documents to run it.
01
Define success before interviewing
Before speaking to candidates, write down what this person must have accomplished twelve months after joining.
If you cannot describe success, you are not ready to evaluate somebody against it.
Everything else should derive from this:
02
Build the competencies
Competencies are the small number of capabilities that genuinely determine success.
Four to six is usually enough.
They must be observable.
“Strong communicator” is not useful.
Better:
Can explain a technical trade-off to a non-technical executive clearly enough for them to make a decision.
Likewise:
“Strategic” is weak.
Better:
Can turn an ambiguous company objective into a sequence of technical decisions and explicitly describe the trade-offs.
03
Build the scorecard
Map each competency deliberately across the interview loop.
Not every interviewer needs to assess everything.
In fact, they should not.
Assign ownership so that:
- every important dimension is evaluated
- interviewers know what evidence they are responsible for collecting
- candidates do not answer the same questions five times
- feedback is comparable
Terra’s existing Competency Scorecard should sit alongside this guide as the working tool.
04
Recruiter screen
The recruiter screen has two jobs:
Give the candidate real information
Explain:
- the role
- the team
- the company stage
- the mission
- the hiring process
- what the first year actually requires
Establish baseline alignment
Confirm:
- motivation
- relevant career context
- compensation expectations
- location/travel constraints
- timing
- anything likely to prevent the process from working
This is not a lightweight “culture screen”.
It should prevent avoidable surprises later.
05
Technical or hiring-manager screen
The next conversation should test the capabilities that cannot credibly be evaluated by recruiting.
Use structured questions derived from the competency model.
The objective is not:
Do I like talking to this person?
It is:
Do I have enough evidence that they should proceed to the expensive part of the process?
For technical roles, test both knowledge and judgment.
Knowing an answer and knowing what to do when the answer is unclear are different capabilities.
06
Work sample
A well-designed work sample is one of the highest-signal stages in a hiring process.
It is also easy to design badly.
A good prompt
- mirrors work the candidate could reasonably do in the role
- specifies the format
- defines the problem clearly
- gives explicit constraints
- states a maximum amount of preparation time
- allows more than one defensible answer
- gives the interviewers something substantive to question
07
Structured interviews
After the work sample, use targeted one-to-one or two-to-one interviews.
Each interviewer should have:
- defined competencies
- two or three core questions
- follow-up prompts
- access to the relevant evidence
- a clear requirement to submit written feedback
A panel does not become structured merely because several people attend it.
08
Written evidence before discussion
This is one of the highest-leverage rules in the entire system:
Require:
- a score
- evidence
- positive findings
- concerns
- an explicit hiring position
Reject:
“Not a culture fit.”
unless the interviewer can explain what observable behaviour or requirement the candidate failed against.
09
Decision meeting
The objective is not consensus.
Consensus often produces the safest candidate rather than the strongest one.
What matters is explicit judgment supported by evidence.
Terra decision rubric
Each interviewer records one position:
+2 Champion
I strongly support the hire and will actively advocate for them.
+1 Advocate
I support the hire.
0 Neutral
I do not have enough evidence to materially support or oppose.
−1 Soft no
I have meaningful concerns and would not hire without those being resolved.
−2 Hard no
I believe the evidence argues against hiring.
With a five-person panel, Terra’s existing methodology uses the total as a forcing function:
- 3 or below: generally no hire
- 4: possible hire requiring discussion
- 5 or above: hire territory
The hiring manager remains the decision-maker.
The number does not make the decision. Its purpose is to prevent people hiding behind vague language.
One credible hard no on an essential competency can matter more than the arithmetic.
10
References
Run references as a substantive evaluation stage, not an administrative exercise after the decision is already made.
Use the Engineering Leadership Reference Guide for leadership and technical hires.
The output should contribute to both:
- final hiring judgment
- onboarding
If a reference materially contradicts the interview evidence, investigate the contradiction rather than averaging it away.
11
Offer and close
Once the decision is made, speed and coordination matter.
The recruiter should own the offer conversation.
The hiring team should reinforce it.
Useful actions include:
- direct follow-up from interviewers
- a clear explanation of why the candidate was chosen
- rapid resolution of outstanding questions
- conversations with relevant founders, executives, investors or board members where genuinely useful
- introducing key future colleagues
- beginning the relationship before the start date
Closing is not pressure.
It is removing uncertainty.
12
Measure whether the process works
A structured process is only valuable if it predicts good hires.
Track:
- time from role opening to qualified shortlist
- time in each interview stage
- candidate dropout by stage
- reasons candidates withdraw
- offer acceptance
- reasons offers are declined
- interviewer score spread
- candidate experience
- quality and retention of hires at twelve months
- whether strong and weak hires were predicted correctly by the scorecard
The final measure is not whether the process was followed.
It is whether the process helps the company make better decisions.
Working toolkit
This guide should ship with:
Competency Scorecard
Editable working spreadsheet.
Interview Question Bank
Structured prompts mapped to competencies.
Work Sample Brief
Template for creating role-relevant exercises.
Hiring Decision Sheet
Independent feedback and the +2 to −2 decision rubric.
Engineering Leadership Reference Guide
Reference system for senior technical and leadership hires.
Together, these form a lightweight hiring operating system rather than another presentation about interviewing.
Related service
Critical Search
Executive and difficult individual hires
Designed PDF
The working toolkit
These are the editable documents, not exports. A PDF of a scorecard is not a scorecard.
Competency Scorecard
XLSX · 25 KBMaps each competency deliberately across the interview loop so every dimension is owned and no candidate answers the same question five times.
- Competency mapFour to six observable competencies, each assigned to a named interviewer.
Recovered from the previous site.
Download the xlsxInterview Question Bank
XLSX · 9 KBStructured prompts mapped to competencies, with the follow-ups that turn an opinion into evidence.
- Question BankEighteen questions across stage and competency. Each carries three follow-up prompts, what a strong answer contains, and what a weak answer sounds like.
- InstructionsSix rules, including the separation of knowledge from judgment and the rejection of an unexplained culture-fit veto.
Built August 2026 to the approved guide.
Download the xlsxWork Sample Brief
DOCX · 39 KBA reusable template for role-relevant exercises, with the free-work test as a hard check before the brief can be issued.
- Part A — author checkEight hard checks with an explicit action if any fails: mirrors real work, format specified, problem defined, constraints explicit, preparation time capped.
- Part B — candidate-facing briefThe eight sections a candidate receives, including the stated time cap and the commitment not to use candidate work as unpaid commercial work.
- Part C — interviewer evaluationEvidence recorded against a named competency, feeding the Structured Interview System rather than a separate hidden score.
Built August 2026 to the approved guide.
Download the docxHiring Decision Sheet
XLSX · 6 KBIndependent written feedback captured before any group discussion, then the +2 to −2 rubric totalled automatically.
- Candidate FeedbackOne row per interviewer: score, evidence, positive findings, concerns, explicit hiring position, culture-fit check, and whether it was submitted before the debrief.
- Decision SummaryLive panel total and a hard-no flag, the approved rubric wording, the five-person interpretation bands, and sign-off. The sheet states that the number does not make the decision.
Built August 2026 to the approved guide.
Download the xlsxReference Synthesis Scorecard
XLSX · 8 KBThe same eleven dimensions recorded for every reference, so the strongest anecdote does not become the whole decision.
- Reference SummaryOne row per reference across all eleven dimensions from the guide, plus relationship and time worked together.
- Reference DetailA per-call evidence record with a prompt for each dimension and a column for what remains unclear.
- InstructionsSix rules, including documenting each call independently before comparing, and returning to context rather than averaging conflicting accounts.
Built August 2026 to the approved guide.
Download the xlsx
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