Have you ever considered providing interview questions to candidates in advance? While revealing questions to candidates for the first time in interviews can assess how they react in a spontaneous situation, this technique may yield responses that don't fully showcase experience. The pressure of the interview situation, combined with the need to think on the spot, could result in answers that don’t accurately represent the candidate’s capabilities.

By releasing some or all of your interview questions to candidates in advance, they can prepare a response that truly highlights their experience, successes, and the value they’ll bring to the role. As with many interview strategies, providing interview questions to candidates in advance comes with advantages and disadvantages. To discover some of the key pros and cons of this approach and decide whether to integrate it into your hiring process, continue reading.

Providing interview questions to candidates in advance can help them showcase their skills better — Providing interview questions to candidates in advance can allow you to better understand their experience.

Pros of Releasing Interview Questions in Advance

1. Improves Candidate Preparation

A primary benefit of providing interview questions to candidates in advance is that candidates can better prepare for what will be discussed during the interview. They have the opportunity to carefully consider their responses and establish a clear connection between their answers and the responsibilities of the position they’re applying for.

Having time to prepare allows candidates to better showcase their knowledge and skills. Asking questions, especially out-of-the-box, questions in the interview can cause quick and under-pressure formulation of responses that may not completely show the employees’ knowledge.

2. Increases Fairness and Transparency

If you’re looking to reduce bias in the hiring process, you may want to consider providing interview questions to candidates in advance. Giving all candidates the same set of questions ahead of time means that everyone has the same chance to prepare.

It also reduces the likelihood of interviewers deviating from the agreed-upon questions. This minimizes the risk of candidates being asked significantly different questions, some of which may inadvertently promote confirmation bias toward candidates that the interviewer prefers.

In addition, candidates will have different approaches to answering questions. While some may adeptly handle impromptu questions, others might provide their most proficient answers, showcasing their true ability, when given time for preparation. Favoring one type of candidate’s way of thinking over others may introduce bias into your hiring process and negatively impact diversity within your team.

3. Promotes a Skills-Focused Assessment

When you provide interview questions to candidates in advance, they can better demonstrate their relevant skills and experiences. This will lead to a more skill-based assessment of candidates instead of assessing candidates in large part on how they respond to impromptu questions.

Two women in business attire sat at a table talking — Being able to better assess skills is a benefit of providing questions in advance of an interview.

4. Reduces Stress in Candidates

Candidates will likely be a little nervous or stressed when approaching an interview. Giving them an outline of what will be asked in advance can reduce stress levels greatly. This in turn leads to an interview environment in which a candidate can more comfortably showcase their skills, experience, and personality (an important thing to assess when deciding on culture fit vs. on-paper fit of candidates).

5. Results in Higher Quality Responses

Allowing candidates time to prepare responses to interview questions increases the likelihood of them providing thoughtful and detailed answers. These higher-quality responses enable the interviewer to more effectively evaluate the candidate and gain a comprehensive understanding of their skills and experience.

Providing interview questions to candidates in advance also contributes to a more comprehensive depiction of the candidate's work experience. When questions are asked on the spot, the pressure to formulate immediate, in-depth responses may lead to the candidate overlooking or omitting important information.

Cons of Releasing Interview Questions in Advance

1. Risk of Over-Preparation

A potential negative of providing interview questions to candidates in advance is that candidates may over-prepare and provide responses that don’t demonstrate their true ability. Giving additional time to build replies could make candidates think about the answer they ‘should’ give. They may even find example responses to copy that include skills and experiences they don’t actually have.

2. Limited Spontaneity

A well-known benefit of asking interview questions on the fly is that you can assess the spontaneity of candidates and how they react when asked for important information or ideas on the spot. However, when you provide interview questions to candidates in advance, they may come to the interview with overly scripted questions that don’t allow you to assess spontaneity and how they respond to requests under a degree of pressure.

3. Potential for Memorization

Following on from the potential issue of reduced spontaneity, candidates may memorize all answers if provided with interview questions in advance. They may even write answers based on examples they find, leading them to respond with scripted answers that don’t reflect their true skills and knowledge at all.

To counteract this, you can provide interview questions to candidates in advance but ask follow-up questions to each response to better assess if the candidates possess this knowledge or if they are repeating a script.

A man interviewing at a table with two other people — Candidates may memorize responses if questions are given in advance, resulting in true ability not being shown.

4. Unequal Preparation Between Candidates

Another potential disadvantage of providing interview questions to candidates in advance is that there may be an unequal amount of preparation between candidates due to differences in lifestyle and schedule. For example, someone who is searching for a new job while unemployed will generally have more time to prepare than someone who is interviewing while employed at another job.

Another concern is that some candidates have access to professional recruiters or individuals who have experience in hiring. These individuals can help those candidates prepare the high-quality answers that recruiters will be looking for, while other candidates can only use their own ideas and basic research to formulate answers.

To lessen the chance of unequal preparation occurring, try to give interview questions to all candidates at the same time and as far in advance as possible. You may also want to highlight that they shouldn't over-prepare; simply spend 30 minutes to an hour at most thinking about how you will reply and what skills and experience you will showcase in each response.

5. Inability To Assess Adaptability

As mentioned, providing interview questions to candidates in advance can lead to reduced spontaneity. This can result in difficulties assessing the skills of candidates and their ability to recount their experience on the spot.

The ability to be adaptive, think quickly, and come up with answers, ideas, and solutions on the spot is crucial to many roles, making it an important thing to assess during the interview process. Factoring in some questions that candidates didn’t prepare for along with the ones they did can help to better assess adaptability.

6. Added Time to the Interview Process

If you intend to provide interview questions to candidates in advance, you’ll have to formulate them in advance as well, which can add time to the hiring process. You may also end up having longer interviews due to asking follow-up questions to confirm information given in the prepared answers. However, once you have questions created for different roles, you can simply update and adjust them each time you hire, reducing the time frame.

A man sitting at a desk looking at a laptop — The hiring process can be extended as you need time to prepare questions and provide them to candidates.

The Benefits of a Mixed Approach on Providing Interview Questions to Candidates in Advance

Evidently, there are advantages and potential disadvantages to providing interview questions to candidates in advance. A good tip for interviewers to optimize the interview process is to have a mixed approach. Share certain questions with candidates before the interview and reserve others to be asked spontaneously during the actual interview.

As briefly discussed above, you can also ask follow-up questions after responses to the provided questions are given, allowing you to understand more about the candidate’s experience. Doing this will also confirm that the skills and knowledge addressed in their response genuinely align with their capabilities.

Interview Presentations

Another way to incorporate pre-provided questions into the interview process is by asking for a job interview presentation to be given. In this scenario, you’ll ask candidates to present on a certain topic related to the position. It could even be a presentation on themselves, their experience, and why they’re a good fit for the role.

Provide some interview questions that must be covered in the presentation, allowing them time to prepare responses. After the presentation, ask questions on what was presented and then ask some additional interview questions relating to the role that are new to the candidate.

To minimize the chance of bias, give the same brief and questions for the presentation to all candidates and ask the same after-presentation questions. Only the questions asked about each candidate’s presentation will vary slightly.

In Conclusion

Deciding whether to provide interview questions to candidates in advance poses a challenge, as there are both advantages and disadvantages to doing so. The decision may ultimately depend on what you want to get from the interview. Are you aiming to assess the candidate's spontaneity and ability to recount experiences on the spot? Or do you want to create an optimal environment for candidates to showcase their skills, knowledge, and experience through prepared responses to interview questions?

As discussed, adopting a well-rounded approach that incorporates a combination of provided and new questions is typically optimal for most organizations. This approach allows candidates to present their professional experience before delving into those experiences in greater detail through questions introduced for the first time during the interview.

Ultimately, the decision to release interview questions in advance should be based on the specific needs and goals of the hiring process and the nature of the job.

Is your company looking to enhance its recruitment process and attract top-tier talent? The experienced team at Lynne Palmer can assist you with streamlining your process and finding the ideal candidates for your hiring needs. Reach out to Lynne Palmer today to discover how we can work together!

Should You Provide Interview Questions to Candidates in Advance?

Providing interview questions to candidates in advance can allow you to better understand their experience.