Structured and Unstructured Interview

Interviews are complex; therefore, the interviewer has adopted the quality of the structured and unstructured interview from the interviewee. The structured interview follows a fixed questionnaire from the interviewees however, unstructured interview is not on the fixed questionnaire, and the interview prepares the question with the communication with the interviewee. The interviewer asks some selected questions with the interviewee in the structured interview, on the other hand, the interviewer does not prepare the selected question, and they decide the question with the conservation of the interviewee.    

Unstructured Interview Example

Recruitment process

During the face-to-face interviews for the jobs, the hiring team uses the unstructured interview to ask a question from the interviewee. The recruiter starts the conservation in the natural direction to know more about the behaviour of the candidates and change their questions according to the response of the candidate. 

Exploratory research

The researcher wants to gather the information of the research however, they do not have more information or knowledge on the research. Therefore, they asked with the researcher and students that are researching on the topic to get information on the research. 

Telephone Interviews

In the telephone interview, the interviewer wants to connect with the candidates to get more information on the research. 

Panel Interviews

The interview is based on the set of questionnaires however, the interviewer started to ask the question differentiation from the list. They want to gather more information about the candidates by the response of candidates on the previous answer. The question is prepared instantly to know the capability of the candidates. 

Structured and Unstructured interview

Structured interview

The interview contains a particular set of questions that are asked from the candidates to get the capability and the ability of the candidates. Questions asked in the interview determine the candidates are capable for the jobs. The question is fixed in the interview therefore; it provides quantitative information about the candidates. The structured interview is used by the interview to select the limited number of candidates for the job and the numbers of the present candidates are large in number. The set of questions is difficult and asked in any previous interview creates difficulties for the candidates to answer all the questions of the interviewer.  

Unstructured interview

The interview does not contain any set of particular questions for the interview. The interview starts from the conservation with the candidate and the interviewer shows interest in the background of the candidates. They get more information about the candidates and the interviewer wants to know if that person is capable or the right person for the job. The interview provides the qualitative information of the candidates and the researcher is able to know the personal details of the candidates, that helps them to judge the right person for the job. 

Difference between a structured and unstructured interview

During the structured interview, the question is fixed and prepared in the advance. Generally, the questions prepared in the structured interview are different from the old interview and they are rarely asked in the interview. The questions asked in structured interviews are rare, and the candidates have prepared well to answer such types of questions. As the structured interview is pre-planned, therefore the data is quantitative in nature. On the other hand, questions asked in the unstructured interview are not prepared before the interview. The interviewer starts the interview with the communication with the candidates and generates interest in the background of the candidates to collect more information about the candidate. The data collected in the unstructured interview are qualitative data. In descriptive research, the structured interview is used to collect the information about the research however that provides finding and economical use in the research, unstructured interviews the questions are asked to know the tools used in the research. In the structured interview, the candidates are restricted, and the interviewer can get the piece of the information from the candidates, however, in the unstructured interview, the candidates are free to share their thoughts with the interviewer that helps the interviewer to gather more information from the candidates. Structured interviews are used in positivists however unstructured are used in the interpretive way. 

Conclusion

In the present article, the difference between structured and unstructured has been discussed. The benefits of the structured interview are that it helps to take the information from the candidates and is able to reduce the number of candidates. However, the unstructured interview is used to know the background of the candidates and their capability for the jobs.  In the structured interview, they are not free to share their thoughts. On the other hand in the unstructured interview, the candidates are free to share their thoughts.