The job interview favours good candidates

Is a candidate who performs well in an interview necessarily the most capable of succeeding in the role?

This is one of recruitment’s most common reflexes: after a strong exchange, it becomes easier to picture someone in the job. The candidate is clear, structured, motivated. They answer well, provide the right examples, and seem to grasp what the role demands. The impression is positive , sometimes very positive.

But the interview does not always reveal the best candidate. It also reveals something else: a candidate’s ability to perform well in an interview.

Some profiles are very skilled at presenting themselves, telling their story, using the right language, and anticipating what the recruiter expects. Others, equally competent, sell themselves less effectively. They are less fluent, more reserved, more analytical, less familiar with the codes of the interview format.

The risk, therefore, is not simply of being misled by an impression. The risk is of confusing a strong interview performance with genuine potential for success.

The Interview has Value, but it is not enough

The interview serves a real purpose. It helps to understand a career path, explore concrete situations, assess motivation, and establish a first connection between the candidate and the organisation.

But when used on its own it can create a misleading sense of certainty.

A candidate can be excellent in an interview without being the most suitable for the role. Another may be less articulate, but more solid on substance. An atypical profile may require more analytical effort to assess, while a very legible career history immediately reassures.

The problem does not lie with the interview itself. It lies in the excessive weight it is sometimes given in the final decision.

To recruit more effectively, it is worth understanding what the interview genuinely measures , and what it measures less well.

1. The fluency bias: what sounds good appears more credible

Our brains are drawn to what is easy to process.

A clear answer, a composed voice, a well-constructed sentence, a career story told in a logical sequence, all of this creates an impression of competence. The candidate seems structured, credible, reassuring.

But this ease of listening can become a trap.

In an interview, fluency can be mistaken for competence. A candidate who is very comfortable speaking may come across as more relevant, even when the competency being assessed has nothing to do with their ability to present themselves well. Conversely, a less practised candidate,more reserved or more analytical, may make a less immediate impression, even though their actual competencies are strong.

The right question to ask is therefore not: “Did this candidate convince me?”

The more useful question is: “What did they actually demonstrate in relation to the role?”

This distinction matters. In many recruitment processes, the goal is not to find the best communicator. It is to find the person most capable of succeeding in a given environment, with real objectives, real constraints, and real working relationships.

2. The Performance Bias: The Interview Rewards Those Who Have Mastered the Exercise

An interview is also a performance.

The candidate knows they need to present themselves in the best possible light. They prepare their answers, choose their examples, refine their narrative, and learn to reframe weaknesses as areas for growth and past experiences as structured successes.

This is normal. It is even expected.

But the more candidates learn to succeed in interviews, the more the interview risks measuring their mastery of the interview itself.

Some profiles know the codes very well. They know how to respond to a behavioural question, apply the STAR method, frame their experience effectively, and give the recruiter exactly what they are looking for.

Other profiles, sometimes highly competent, may perform less well in this exercise. They sell themselves less readily. They take longer to formulate their thoughts. Their answers may be less polished, but more authentic or more nuanced.

The risk is then to confuse interview performance with professional potential.

A good interview should not simply seek out the candidate who speaks most convincingly about their competencies. It should verify whether those competencies exist, in what context they were applied, and how they can be transferred to the role.

3. The Delegation Bias: When a Score Provides Reassurance Too Quickly

With assessment testing and predictive matching, recruiters now have access to more structured data for comparing candidates.

This is a significant step forward. These tools can help move beyond purely intuitive decisions, bring greater objectivity to certain criteria, and surface dimensions that may not be visible in a CV or an interview.

But a score should never replace the judgement of an HR professional.

The risk runs in both directions. Some recruiters are too quick to distrust tools because they fear automated decision-making. Others may, on the contrary, place too much weight on a numerical recommendation simply because it appears precise and reassuring.

In both cases, the problem is the same: judgement is delegated too readily.

A matching score should be read as an indicator, not a verdict. It opens up better questions, confirms certain points, identifies gaps, and enables profiles to be compared against shared criteria.

It informs the decision. It should not override it.

This is precisely where HR expertise remains essential: interpreting results, placing them in the context of the role, weighing them against observations from the interview, and arriving at a well-reasoned decision.

How to reduce these biases without rigidifying the process

The answer is not to remove the interview, it is to frame it more effectively.

Before meeting candidates, success criteria should be defined clearly: expected competencies, key behaviours, motivations that are relevant to the role, and conditions for success within the team.

During the interview, questions should allow candidates to be compared on similar situations. A natural, fluid conversation can remain engaging while still following a structured framework.

After the interview, impressions should be grounded in observable facts. Saying “I have a good feeling about them” is not sufficient. It must be possible to explain what was demonstrated, at what point, and in relation to which criterion.

Assessment tools can also play an important role, provided they are used as decision-support instruments. Psychometric assessments, role-play exercises, matching scores, motivation analysis, and soft skills data all offer a complementary perspective on what the interview does not always surface.

The right approach is to cross-reference the signals.

What the CV shows. What the interview reveals. What the assessments indicate.
What the role actually requires.

It is this combination that makes the decision more reliable.

The real goal: better decisions, not better guesses

Biases in recruitment are not solely individual errors. They can stem from the structure of the process itself.

An overly unstructured interview encourages impressionistic judgements. A highly fluent candidate may appear more competent. A well-prepared candidate may perform better. A score may reassure too quickly if it is not interpreted with sufficient distance.

The answer is therefore not to choose between human intuition and assessment tools.

The answer is to build a decision that is more structured, more explainable, and more consistent with the success criteria of the role.

The right candidate is not always the one who performs best in an interview.

It is the one with the greatest chance of succeeding in the role.