How to give every candidate the same level of prep

To give every candidate the same level of prep, you need to share your interview questions in advance, provide a clear outline of the hiring process, and standardise the information every applicant receives before they walk through the door.

Key takeaways

• Treating interviews like a surprise test favours naturally confident talkers over thoughtful, capable workers.
• Providing a standard briefing pack ensures everyone has the exact same context about your company and the role.
• Sharing interview questions in advance allows candidates to provide actual examples rather than panicked, on-the-spot answers.
• Different work personalities process information differently, meaning standardized prep is the only way to fairly assess diverse brains.

You have probably sat across from a candidate who completely bombed an interview, only to realise later they were just incredibly nervous. They lost their train of thought, gave short answers, and stared blankly when you asked them to recall a specific time they solved a complex problem.

Then there is the other type of candidate. They walk in, charm the room, and fire off smooth answers to every question you throw at them. You hire them, only to discover three months later that they are brilliant at talking about work but terrible at actually doing it.

We have all made this mistake. It happens because traditional hiring processes do not test a person's ability to do the job. They test a person's ability to perform in an interview.

If you want to hire the right person, you need to stop treating the interview like a pop quiz. You need to level the playing field. When you figure out how to give every candidate the same level of prep, you stop assessing their improvisational skills and start assessing their actual competence.

The problem with the pop quiz approach

Most hiring managers withhold information because they want to see how a candidate thinks on their feet. They believe that a surprise question reveals true character or intelligence.

In reality, ambushing candidates only reveals who is good at being ambushed. Unless the role specifically requires dealing with high-stakes, unexpected interrogations daily, this method is completely useless for predicting job performance.

When you leave prep up to the candidate, you invite massive inequality into your hiring process. One person might have spent ten hours doing mock interviews with a career coach. Another person might be a single parent who could only spare fifteen minutes to quickly scan your website on the train ride over.

If you do not control the baseline of information they receive, you are judging them on their free time and resources rather than their professional capability.

Share the interview questions in advance

This is the single most effective change you can make to your hiring process. Send the interview questions to the candidate 24 to 48 hours before you meet.

Many managers push back on this idea. They worry that candidates will script their answers or sound like robots. But think about how work actually happens. When you need your team to solve a major problem, you do not drag them into a room, demand an immediate answer, and judge them on the first thing that falls out of their mouth. You give them the context, you give them time to prepare, and you ask them to bring their best ideas to the table.

Interviews should mirror the reality of the job. By giving candidates the questions early, you are telling them exactly what you care about. You are giving them the space to dig into their work history and find the most relevant, accurate examples of their past performance.

The candidates who care will use that time to prepare thoughtful, detailed responses. The ones who do not care still will not prepare, and their lack of effort will be painfully obvious.

Standardise your pre-interview briefing pack

Every candidate should receive the exact same information before they meet you. Do not assume they know what your company does or what the daily reality of the role looks like.

Create a standard briefing document and send it to everyone who makes it to the interview stage. This pack should include a clear summary of the company goals, the specific problems this role needs to solve in the first six months, and a breakdown of who they will be meeting.

You also need to remove the logistical anxiety. Tell them what the dress code is. Tell them how long the interview will take. Tell them if there is a technical task involved and exactly what it entails. When a candidate is worried about whether they are underdressed or if they parked in the wrong spot, their brain is burning energy on survival rather than focusing on the conversation.

When everyone has the same context, your interview becomes a genuine conversation about how they would approach the work, rather than a test of who did the best internet research.

Account for different work personalities

Even when you provide the exact same prep material, different brains will process and use that information in completely different ways. Understanding these natural tendencies is how you truly level the playing field.

At Hey Compono, our research into organisational psychology shows that people generally fall into distinct work personalities, and these personalities dictate how they handle the pressure of an interview.

Take The Campaigner, for example. They are enthusiastic, big-picture thinkers who thrive on networking and selling a vision. In an unstructured interview, they will shine. They can talk their way through almost anything. If you give them the questions in advance, they might just quickly scan them, trusting their natural ability to charm the room.

Now consider The Auditor. They are methodical, reserved, and focused on facts and details. In a surprise interview, they will likely freeze or give overly short answers because they need time to process and ensure their response is perfectly accurate. But if you give an Auditor the questions in advance, they will map out highly detailed, evidence-based examples that prove their competence.

Then you have The Doer. They are practical, straightforward, and task-oriented. They want to know exactly what the job entails so they can tell you how they will execute it. If your interview questions are vague or overly philosophical, The Doer will struggle to engage. Providing a clear briefing pack gives them the concrete boundaries they need to show you their practical skills.

If you want to understand how a candidate naturally approaches their work before they even sit down for the interview, Hey Compono gives you that exact insight in about ten minutes. When you know who you are talking to, you can adjust your expectations and look past the surface-level interview performance.

Remove the mystery from the technical task

If your hiring process includes a practical assessment or a presentation, you need to be relentlessly clear about the parameters. Vague instructions lead to wild variations in what candidates submit.

If you ask candidates to "put together a short presentation on a marketing strategy," one person will spend three hours building a 20-slide deck with custom graphics. Another person will spend thirty minutes writing a one-page outline. You are no longer comparing their strategic thinking. You are comparing their free time and their interpretation of the word "short."

Give them strict boundaries. Tell them exactly how much time they should spend on the task. Tell them the maximum number of slides or words you will accept. Tell them exactly what criteria you will use to grade the work.

When the rules are rigid and identical for everyone, the only thing left to judge is the quality of their thinking.

Stop rewarding the performance

Hiring is hard enough without actively working against your own best interests. When you rely on the traditional, secretive interview format, you are filtering out deep thinkers, introverts, and methodical workers in favour of people who are just really good at talking about themselves.

By standardising the prep, sharing the questions, and giving everyone the exact same context, you strip away the performance aspect of the interview. You force the conversation to be about the actual work.

It requires a shift in how you view the hiring process. You have to stop acting like a gatekeeper trying to trick people into making a mistake. Instead, you need to act like a facilitator, setting every single candidate up to show you the absolute best version of their professional selves.

Key insights

• Surprise interview questions test improvisational skills, not job competence or future performance.
• Providing questions in advance allows candidates to prepare accurate, thoughtful examples from their past experience.
• A standard briefing pack removes logistical anxiety and ensures all candidates share the same baseline knowledge of the role.
• Different work personalities react to interviews differently – some naturally wing it, while others require structured prep to demonstrate their true value.
• Technical tasks must have rigid, clear boundaries so you are judging the quality of the work rather than the candidate's free time.

Ready to understand how your candidates actually think and work before you hire them?

• Explore: Personality-adaptive coaching and hiring insights

Frequently asked questions

Will candidates just read scripted answers if I give them the questions in advance?

Some might try, but it is very easy to spot a scripted answer. When a candidate reads from a script, you can simply ask a follow-up question to dig deeper into their example. The benefit of them having prepared a real, relevant example far outweighs the risk of them sounding a bit rehearsed.

How far in advance should I send the interview prep materials?

Aim for 24 to 48 hours before the interview. This gives candidates enough time to review the materials and think about their responses without dragging the process out for a week. It respects their time while ensuring they are not rushed.

Does standardising prep mean the interview will be boring?

Actually, it makes the interview much more engaging. Because the candidate already knows the baseline questions, you spend less time watching them struggle to remember a past event and more time having a deep, meaningful conversation about how they achieved their results.

How do I handle candidates who clearly didn't read the prep material?

This is one of the best benefits of standardising your prep. If you give someone all the tools they need to succeed and they choose not to use them, that tells you exactly how they will treat important projects if you hire them. It makes your hiring decision much easier.

Should I tell candidates who they will be meeting in the interview?

Yes. Give them the names and job titles of everyone on the interview panel. This allows them to understand the perspective of the people asking the questions and removes the intimidating surprise of walking into a room filled with strangers.