The research behind Inter-Hiring

One of the most-replicated findings in personnel selection research is that structured interviews reliably outperform unstructured, free-flowing conversations as a predictor of job performance. A structured interview means the same questions for every candidate, with what a strong answer looks like decided in advance rather than judged in the moment. Our Interview Guide is built the same way: fixed questions, a predefined rubric, applied consistently to every candidate for a role.

Our Pre-Application questionnaire (a work scenario, several plausible responses, and a scoring key the candidate never sees) is what the research literature calls a Situational Judgment Test. It's a well-studied, validated method for predicting job performance, and separately shown to produce smaller demographic differences between groups than some alternative testing methods, which is a real point in its favour on fairness grounds, not just effectiveness.

The research literature calls this Person-Organisation Fit: how well someone's values align with an employer's actual working culture, distinct from simply having the right skills. Large-scale research in this area consistently links good fit to job satisfaction, commitment, and a reduced likelihood of leaving, the outcome most relevant to hiring. Our Deep Dive and Values & Spectrum stages exist to capture that alignment directly, rather than leaving it to a hunch in an interview.

This one rests less on a single study and more on the throughline connecting all of the above: pre-defined, consistently-applied criteria beat an unstructured “does this look right” skim of a CV. Our CV assessment applies the same fixed criteria to every candidate, rather than an impression that can vary from one CV to the next.