Interviewing and Hiring: Best Practices for Finance Teams

Most finance managers are promoted into hiring responsibility with no actual training in it — they've sat on the other side of the table as a candidate, watched a few interviews as an observer, and are then expected to reliably judge who's genuinely capable of doing a technically demanding job. Good interviewing is a learnable skill, not an instinct some managers happen to have, and getting it wrong is expensive: a bad senior hire can cost a multiple of their salary once recruitment, onboarding, lost productivity and eventual replacement are all counted.

Why Unstructured Interviewing Fails Reliably

Research on hiring decisions consistently finds that unstructured interviews — free-flowing conversation, different questions for different candidates, judgement based on overall impression — are a poor predictor of actual job performance, barely better than chance in some studies. They're also where the unconscious bias covered in our dedicated guide does the most damage, because impression-based judgement gives bias maximum room to operate. Structured interviewing, using the same core questions and a defined scoring approach for every candidate, consistently outperforms unstructured interviewing at predicting who will actually succeed in the role.

A Practical Framework for Better Hiring

1. Define what "good" looks like before you meet anyone. Write down the specific skills, experience and behaviours the role actually requires, agreed with anyone else involved in the decision, before reviewing a single CV.
2. Use the same core questions for every candidate. Structured, behavioural questions ("tell me about a time you had to challenge a client's judgement") asked consistently produce far more comparable, defensible signal than an open-ended conversation that drifts differently for each person.
3. Score independently before discussing as a group. Interviewers who share impressions before scoring tend to converge on the most senior or most vocal person's view; independent scoring first, then discussion, produces more genuinely independent signal.
4. Test for the job, not for interview performance. A well-designed technical exercise or work-sample test predicts on-the-job performance better than conversational fluency alone, which can favour confident communicators over people who'd actually do excellent technical work.

Worked Example: Hiring a Senior Associate

A practice hiring for a senior associate role has historically relied on partners' individual gut feel after an informal conversation. For this round, the hiring partner defines specific criteria in advance (technical competence in a relevant area, evidence of client-relationship management, a specific behavioural indicator around handling pushback), uses the same three behavioural questions with every candidate, and adds a short, realistic technical exercise based on an anonymised real client scenario. Two candidates who might previously have been screened out based on a less polished interview manner score strongly on the technical exercise and structured questions — exactly the kind of signal a purely conversational process would have missed.

Common Pitfalls

The most common mistake is treating structure as bureaucratic box-ticking rather than a genuine predictive tool — interviewers who go through the motions of structured questions but still decide based on overall impression get none of the actual benefit. The second is over-weighting interview polish and confidence, which correlates with communication style far more than with the technical competence the role actually requires.

Building This Into Team Practice

Firms that hire well maintain a consistent, role-specific interview structure that's actually used, not just documented, and calibrate interviewers periodically so scoring stays consistent across different people conducting interviews.

Why This Belongs in a Structured CPD Programme

Hiring competence directly affects team quality and is rarely taught formally, and structured CPD gives managers a documented, deliberate way to build the skill rather than learning it by making (and repeating) expensive mistakes.

How This Fits Into a Broader Compliance Programme

Structured, criteria-based hiring is one of the most effective practical controls against unconscious bias and discrimination claims — a documented, consistent process is far more defensible under the UK Equality Act 2010 or Ireland's Employment Equality Acts than an informal, impression-based one, should a rejected candidate ever challenge a hiring decision.

FAQ

Does structured interviewing take longer than unstructured interviewing?
The upfront design takes some time, but the interviews themselves are typically similar in length — the real time saved comes from fewer bad hires and faster, more confident decisions.

Can structured interviewing feel too rigid for senior roles?
The core questions should stay consistent for fairness, but there's still room for natural follow-up and conversation within that structure — it's not a script read verbatim.

How many interviewers should score independently?
At least two, wherever practical, since independent scoring from multiple people meaningfully reduces the impact of any one person's individual bias or blind spot.

Should the same structured process apply to internal promotions as well as external hires?
Yes, since the same bias risks that unstructured external hiring carries apply just as strongly to informal, impression based promotion decisions, and a documented process protects internal candidates too.

For related reading, see our guides to unconscious bias in the workplace and inclusive leadership for finance managers. Build your team's skills further with Learnsignal's CPD courses.