Interviews
Ayush Kudesia
February 20, 2026
We’ve all been in that debrief meeting.
The one where two talented hiring managers look at the exact same candidate and see two completely different people. One manager is ready to make an offer because they “just clicked” over a shared history at the same university. The other is lukewarm because the candidate “didn’t seem assertive enough” during a five-minute technical curveball.
It’s frustrating. It’s a waste of time. And if you’re the one trying to hit hiring targets, it’s a nightmare.
This isn’t just a “difference of opinion.” It’s interview inconsistency, and it’s the reason why so many companies end up with “lucky” hires instead of “predictable” ones. If you want to rank for these conversations in 2026, you have to stop looking at interviewing as an art form and start looking at it as a repeatable process.
Most hiring managers don’t wake up wanting to be biased or inconsistent. In fact, most of them genuinely want to find the best person for the team. The problem is that they were likely promoted because they were great at their job—coding, selling, designing—not because they were trained in the nuances of Industrial Psychology.
When we throw a manager into an interview without a roadmap, we’re asking them to “wing it.” And when humans wing it, we default to what’s easy: rapport.
We’ve been told for decades that “culture fit” is everything. But “culture fit” has become a lazy shorthand for “someone I’d like to grab a beer with.”
When a manager spends 40 minutes talking about the candidate’s weekend and only 5 minutes on their ability to manage a cross-functional budget, they aren’t interviewing; they’re socializing. This is where the inconsistency starts. If Candidate A is a hiker and the manager is a hiker, they’re “a great fit.” If Candidate B is equally qualified but prefers reading at home, they’re “a bit of a question mark.”
Have you ever looked at the feedback notes in your ATS?
This happens because the manager was staring at a blank page. Without specific questions to ask and a rubric to grade against, they have no choice but to rely on their intuition. And as the data shows, human intuition is a terrible recruiter.
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that bad hires are expensive. But the costs of inconsistent interviewing go deeper than just a severance package.
When managers can’t agree on a candidate because they used different criteria, the hiring process stalls. This friction is a primary driver of recruitment delays; if you want to understand the mechanics of these bottlenecks, see our deep dive into time-to-hire to see why your best candidates are ghosting you. You lose the candidate to a competitor who was faster, and your internal team gets frustrated. This friction erodes the trust between Talent Acquisition and Department Heads.
Inconsistency is the playground where unconscious bias lives. If you don’t have a standardized process, people naturally hire people who look, talk, and think just like them. You end up with an echo chamber instead of a high-performing, diverse team.
We are seeing a massive shift toward “Fair Hiring” transparency. If a candidate asks why they weren’t hired, and your documentation shows that they were asked fundamentally different (and perhaps less relevant) questions than the person who got the job, you aren’t just in a tough spot—you’re a liability.
So, how do we fix this without making the process feel like a robotic interrogation? We need to give our managers a safety net, not a script. Ultimately, the goal is to build a talent acquisition strategy that scales without losing that vital human touch.
Instead of asking if someone “fits in,” define the specific values your team is missing. Are you too cautious? Look for a candidate who demonstrates calculated risk-taking. Are you disorganized? Look for a process-oriented thinker.
By defining these as competencies, you give your managers something objective to look for.
This is the simplest change with the highest ROI: Ask every candidate the same core questions.
You don’t have to be a robot. You can still have five minutes of “How’s your day?” at the start. But the meat of the interview must be standardized. Why? Because you can’t compare two things if you measured them with different tools.
Standardized Questions look like this:
This sounds like “HR-speak,” but it’s actually very simple. It means giving your managers a “Cheat Sheet” for what a good answer looks like.
| Competency: Problem Solving | What it looks like |
| Score 1 (Poor) | Identifies the problem but waits for someone else to fix it. |
| Score 3 (Average) | Fixes the immediate issue but doesn’t look for the root cause. |
| Score 5 (Excellent) | Fixes the issue and implements a system to ensure it never happens again. |
When you give a manager this rubric, you take the “vibes” out of the equation. Now, they aren’t grading the person; they’re grading the evidence.
Related: The 2026 Talent Acquisition Strategy Blueprint: Why Your Hiring is Broken (and How to Fix It)
Let’s be honest: most “AI for HR” tools are just fancy filters that skip over good people. But technology has a very specific, helpful role in solving the inconsistency problem if used correctly.
Managers are busy. They don’t want to spend three hours writing an interview guide. This is where tools like impress.ai actually show empathy for the manager’s time. They can generate recruitment workflows in seconds based on the job description. It’s not about replacing the human; it’s about giving the human a better starting point.
If you have 500 applicants, it is physically impossible for a human to remain consistent. Fatigue sets in. Using an AI-powered structured interview for that first touchpoint ensures that every single candidate gets the exact same opportunity to showcase their skills. Standardizing this first step is one of the most effective ways to reduce time to hire without losing your best candidates to faster competitors.
Technology allows us to look at the “Correlation of Hire.” We can see if the people who scored high on our “Problem Solving” question actually turn into our top performers. If they don’t, we change the question. That’s how you build a rankable, world-class hiring engine.
You can’t just drop a 50-page manual on your managers’ desks and expect them to cheer. You have to show them that this makes their lives easier.
The companies that will win the talent war over the next few years aren’t the ones with the flashiest offices or the biggest perks. They are the ones that treat candidates with the respect of a fair, consistent, and professional process.
Interview inconsistency is a human problem, but it has a structural solution. By moving toward structured interviews, objective scoring, and supportive technology, you stop guessing and start building a team that is actually capable of hitting your goals.
Ready to see what a “No-Vibes” hiring process looks like? We’ve helped hundreds of teams move from “Gut Feeling” to “Data-Driven.” [Let’s chat about how we can help yours.]
Won’t structured interviews scare away ‘creative’ talent?
Actually, no. Creative talent often feels the most “judged” in unstructured settings. Providing a clear framework allows them to show their work and their process without wondering if they’re being “liked” for the right reasons.
Our managers say they don’t have time for rubrics.
They don’t have time for rubrics, but do they have time to re-hire for the same position in six months? The 10 minutes spent scoring an interview saves 100 hours of performance management later.
How do we handle ‘culture’ then?
Culture is vital, but it shouldn’t be a “feeling.” Define your culture as behaviors. If “Collaboration” is a core value, ask a structured question about a time they had to compromise. That’s how you interview for culture without being biased.
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