The types of job interviews an employer can run range from a five minute phone screen to a paid full day working session, and each exists to answer a different question about a candidate. Choosing between them is mostly a question of stage: what you still need to find out, and how many people are still in the pool when you ask. This guide covers the nine formats and styles behind almost every hiring process, what each costs you in reviewer hours, and how to sequence them so the expensive formats only ever meet a shortlist.
Key takeaways
- The types of job interviews split into two groups: formats, which decide who is in the room and when, and question styles, which decide what gets asked inside any format.
- Match the format to the question the stage is answering, and to how many candidates are still in the pool. Cheap formats go early, expensive ones go last.
- The real cost of a format is reviewer hours per candidate, not the length of the session, and it multiplies by everyone you invite.
- Most roles need three formats, not seven: one cheap filter, one comparable assessment, one human conversation.
Formats and question styles are different things
Lists of interview types usually mix two categories, which is why they read as if you must choose between a panel interview and a behavioral one. You do not: a panel is a format, behavioral is a style of question, and a panel interview can be entirely behavioral.
- Formats decide the logistics: who attends, whether it happens live, how long it runs, what the candidate produces. Phone screen, one-way video, live video, panel, skills test, working session.
- Question styles decide the content: what you actually ask inside any of those formats. Structured, behavioral, situational.
- Every real interview is one format plus one or more styles. A live video call asking 'tell me about a time' questions from a fixed list is a structured behavioral interview.
Keep the two apart and the design decision gets simpler: pick the format from the stage and the volume, then the style from what you are trying to measure.
The nine types of job interviews in one line each
- Phone screen: a short call to confirm interest, notice period and salary range before anyone books real time.
- One-way video interview: the candidate records answers to a fixed set of questions on their own time, in the browser, and you review the recordings later.
- Live video interview: a scheduled real-time call, the remote equivalent of an in-person interview.
- Structured interview: not a separate meeting but a discipline applied to one, where every candidate gets the same questions and rating scale.
- Behavioral interview: questions about real past events, framed as 'tell me about a time you did X'.
- Situational interview: hypothetical questions about the job, framed as 'what would you do if X happened'.
- Panel interview: several interviewers meet the candidate in one session, each covering a different criterion.
- Technical or skills test: a scored assessment of a concrete ability, either a timed multiple choice test or a hands-on exercise.
- Working session: the candidate does a slice of the real job with the team, paid, usually as a final stage for senior roles.
Comparing the formats: when to use each and what it costs
Cost below is reviewer time per candidate, the number that actually decides your process. A format that takes an hour of your team's time cannot be used on two hundred applicants, however good it is.
| Format | When to use it | Cost in hours per candidate |
|---|---|---|
| Phone screen | Small pools, or when salary and notice period are likely dealbreakers you want settled first | 0.25 to 0.5, plus scheduling back and forth |
| One-way video interview | Large pools, early stage, when you need spoken communication and motivation from everyone who applied | 0.1 to 0.2 to review, since transcripts are read far faster than video is watched |
| Live video interview | After a shortlist exists, when you need to probe answers and the candidate needs to ask real questions | 1 to 1.5 including prep, scheduling and write-up |
| Behavioral questions | Experienced candidates with a track record in the same kind of work | No extra cost: a style applied inside another format |
| Situational questions | Graduates, career changers, or any role where the pool has similar or little direct experience | No extra cost: a style applied inside another format |
| Panel interview | Final rounds, or when several stakeholders must sign off and you refuse to run four separate calls | 1 hour multiplied by the number of interviewers, so 3 to 4 in practice |
| Skills test | Any stage where the requirement is a concrete, checkable ability rather than an opinion | Near zero to review: the candidate spends 8 to 12 minutes, scoring is automatic |
| Technical exercise | Engineering, data and design roles where a scored test does not reach the real work | 1 to 2 to brief and assess, more if a reviewer works through the submission line by line |
| Working session | Senior or high-stakes hires, as a last stage on a final one or two candidates | 3 to 8 across the team, and it must be paid |
Early formats: phone screen, one-way video, skills test
The first stage reduces a pool without spending an hour on anyone. Three formats do that, and they are not interchangeable.
A phone screen is right when the pool is small enough to call and the open questions are factual: still interested, can they start in time, is the salary in range. It stops scaling the moment you have more applicants than an afternoon of calls, and most of that afternoon goes on arranging them.
A one-way video interview covers the same ground for a pool of any size. The candidate opens a link, checks their microphone and records answers to your questions with visible time limits, on a phone or a laptop, with no account and no app. You review the transcripts when it suits you. Completion holds up best under fifteen minutes, which usually means four to six questions, and anyone who has not recorded gets an automatic reminder after forty-eight hours. Because the question set is fixed, everyone answers the same thing, which is what makes the stage comparable. See the one-way interview page.
A skills test belongs early whenever the role has a checkable requirement. A typical test runs 8 to 12 minutes over 20 to 30 questions drawn from a larger bank, and scoring needs none of your time at all, which makes it the cheapest signal in the process by a wide margin. The library spans software skills, programming, IT and security, marketing, finance, sales, HR, data and cognitive ability, including role-neutral options such as the Attention to Detail Test and the Problem Solving Test.
- Ahead of all three, put qualifying questions on the application: right to work, location, licence, notice period. They cost nothing to run and are the one place an automatic rejection is fair, because the answer is a fact, not a judgment.
- If you are sifting resumes at volume, scoring them against written criteria is faster than reading them in order. See resume scoring.
Types of interview questions
Once the format is chosen, the style decides what you learn. Three are worth naming.
- 1
Structured
Same questions, same order, same rating scale for every candidate in the role. This is a property you add to whichever format you picked, and it is what turns an interview into evidence you can compare. See the guide to structured and unstructured interviews.
- 2
Behavioral
Asks what the candidate actually did: a real project, a real conflict, a real failure. Strong for experienced hires. Listen for the action they personally took, and follow up whenever an answer arrives entirely in the plural.
- 3
Situational
Asks what they would do in a scenario from the job. Right when the pool has little relevant history, so there is nothing to ask about. The risk is textbook answers, so make the scenario specific to your team.
A useful default: behavioral questions for anything the person has plausibly done before, situational for everything else, both asked in a fixed order and scored on a written scale. See the behavioral interview guide and the situational interview guide.
Beyond those three, most interview questions fall into a handful of categories. Each type of question measures something different, so choose by what the role needs rather than by habit.
| Question type | What it measures | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Screening (closed) | Must-haves and logistics | Are you available to work rotating weekend shifts? |
| Motivational | Why they want this role and what would keep them | What made you apply for this role rather than others like it? |
| Competency based | A named skill shown through past behavior | Tell me about the last time you had to win over a skeptical stakeholder. |
| Technical or role-specific | Knowledge and skill the job uses daily | How would you reconcile a bank account that is off by a small amount? |
| Case or problem solving | Reasoning through an unfamiliar problem | Our support queue doubled this month. How would you find out why? |
| Work sample | Doing a small piece of the real job | Here is a customer complaint. Draft the reply you would send. |
| Values and working style | How they like to work and what they expect from a team | Describe the team setup where you did your best work. |
| Reflective | Self-awareness and learning | What is something you changed about how you work in the last year? |
Late formats: panel, technical exercise, working session
These formats are expensive by design, and the expense is the point. They are worth it only after cheaper stages have narrowed the field to a handful.
- Panel interview: several interviewers, one session, each owning a different criterion so the hour is not spent three times on the same ground. Everyone scores independently before the debrief, or the first opinion spoken becomes the group's.
- Technical exercise: a scoped, time-boxed piece of real work for engineering, data or design roles. Keep it under a few hours and tell candidates how it will be assessed. If a scored test would answer the question, use the test: it costs the candidate minutes, not an evening.
- Working session: the candidate spends part of a day doing the actual job with the team. It is the highest-fidelity format there is and the least scalable. Pay for it, and never run it on more than the final one or two candidates.
Sequencing the types into a process
Choosing among the types of job interviews is really choosing an order. Three principles get most teams there.
- Cheapest signal first. Qualifying questions, then a skills test or a one-way video interview, then live conversation. Never spend an hour on something a two minute question answers.
- Every stage answers a question the previous one could not. If a stage reaches the same verdict as the one before it, delete it rather than defend it.
- One comparable stage before any human round, producing the same evidence for every candidate, so the shortlist is a ranking rather than whoever applied earliest.
For a high-volume role that means qualifying questions, a skills test and a one-way video interview, then one live interview and a decision. For a senior role it means a recruiter conversation, a technical exercise or working session, a panel and a final chat. Both are three or four stages, which is where most roles belong. Screening results land on one report per candidate with scores, answers and transcripts on a single page, so the shortlist is a ranked list rather than five spreadsheets. See a sample report and pricing, where a credit is spent only when a candidate completes.
