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7 CEOs told me how they really hire now. Most career programs aren't prepping for it.
7 min read
I asked 7 CEOs how they actually run interviews. They all described the same pattern. It's the part your learners are walking into completely cold.
Most candidates think interviews are about answering questions well.
They're not.
I asked 7 CEOs how they actually run interviews. Different industries, different company sizes, different roles. Every one of them said the same thing.
They have a standard set of questions. Everyone gets asked them. That part is the floor.
Then the conversation goes somewhere nobody planned.
A follow-up they hadn't written down. A detail the candidate mentioned that pulled the whole thing off-script. A scenario question nobody could have rehearsed for. That's where the real evaluation happens, and it's the part your learners are walking into cold.
Here's what the 7 of them told me, and what it means for anyone running a training program, a career centre, or an employment service in 2026.
1. The checklist is the floor, not the ceiling
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We always have certain specific things we are looking for. We'll ask everyone the same specific questions and analyze specific things we are wanting to gain insight on. But, we also make sure our interviews are conversational. I don't want to not ask a question that pops up in my head as the conversation goes on simply because I hadn't written it down ahead of time.
Read that last line twice. He's not apologizing for the unplanned questions. He's saying they're the point. When a hiring manager hears something interesting and doesn't chase it, they feel like they failed the interview, not the candidate.
So what does the candidate need to be ready for? Not the list. The chase.
2. The "never feels like a checklist" test
Shantanu Pandey
CEO of Tenet
“
At our design agency we mainly focus on planned but flexible interviews. Our team creates a set of important questions to make sure that every candidate is evaluated on the same criteria. This allows us to compare people accurately and reduces bias. The trick is to make sure that the conversation never feels like a checklist. After the core questions we actively use follow-up questions based on the candidate's actual background or a point they raised. This allows them to show their genuine personality and thought process making the interview a productive chat.
Shantanu Pandey runs a design agency called Tenet. His framing is the cleanest in the group:
The interview is engineered to feel like a chat. That's the trap most learners fall into. They relax when it feels like a conversation, then they under-prepare for the moments where the conversation turns into evaluation.
A mock interview that only drills the list doesn't prepare anyone for this. They need reps on the middle part. The part where the interviewer pulls on a thread and watches what happens.
3. Same questions for everyone, even when you already know
The part most career coaches miss: hiring managers run this structure partly for legal and fairness reasons. Every candidate gets the same core questions so the company can defend its hiring decisions. That isn't going away. It's becoming more rigid as AI-driven hiring scrutiny grows, just as you can see in Edward Tian, CEO of GPTZero’s quote.
So the candidates your program is placing will face more standardization at the top of the interview, and more unpredictable judgment after it.
Edward Tian
CEO of GPTZero
“
When we interview, we have a solidified list of questions we always ask, no matter what. Regardless of how our opinions are being shaped throughout the interview or if we start to think we will or will not proceed with a candidate during the interview, everyone gets asked the same questions. But, we also allow for the conversations to then take us in different directions. The solidified set of questions helps ensure standardization, but being able to take the interview where it goes from there allows for more authenticity in our interactions and conversations.
The easiest way to standardize interviews is to have a checklist of things to ask and discuss. Regardless of where the conversation might take you with one candidate or another, it's important that every single person you interview is asked the questions you have deemed necessary to learn as a baseline for the position. This gives everyone the opportunity to discuss the various important things like their experience, their skills, their goals, or whatever else is vital to know. As long as you follow the checklist, that gives you room to ask follow-ups when you want to learn about other things.
Notice what he's saying about the follow-ups. The checklist isn't the interview. The checklist is the permission to run the interview. It clears the legal and fairness bar so the hiring manager can spend the rest of the time actually finding out who's sitting in front of them.
The main way in which we standardize interviews is by having a set of questions that are always asked. These vary a bit from position to position, but when we are interviewing for any particular position, each candidate will get asked those same questions. But, we also allow the conversation to flow naturally and might ask additional questions if they come up.
This matters for one reason. The same 10 questions can lead to 10 completely different interviews. A candidate who gives a short, tight answer gets pulled into different follow-ups than a candidate who gives a long, meandering one. A candidate who mentions a side project gets asked about it. A candidate who doesn't, doesn't.
The learner's answer shapes the next question. So the practice they need isn't "memorize the best answer." It's "learn how your answer changes what comes next."
I find that it's not too difficult to do this. The best interviews are the ones where you get all of the baseline information you need while also allowing the conversation to go where it needs to go. I do this by standardizing the basic questions I ask. I will ask every candidate interviewing for the same role the same set of questions at a minimum so that I can compare them fairly. But, I also will allow the conversation to go in whatever direction it goes so that I can learn whatever else I can on top of that and so that it doesn't feel so rigid.
Same pattern again. The baseline is there for comparison. The open conversation is there for decision-making. Comparison happens at the checklist. Decisions happen after it.
Most learners only practice the comparison phase.
7. The scenario question, where AI-era hiring is actually going
When hiring for our marketing team, I work with HR to keep interviews fair by using a core set of standardized questions. At the same time, we leave space for open discussions where candidates can show how they think and communicate. The most effective step has been asking how they'd market our freight forwarding services in a new region. This is structured, but it also reveals genuine creativity and fit.
This is the one to pay attention to.
"How would you market our service in a new region."
It isn't a behavioral question. It isn't a STAR-method question. There's no past experience to draw on. It's a live problem-solving question, in front of a stranger, with no time to prepare.
This kind of question is becoming the default for a reason. In a world where AI can write a cover letter, polish a resume, and generate a rehearsed STAR answer for any behavioral prompt, hiring managers are pushing interviews toward what AI can't fake: live thinking on an unfamiliar problem.
Your learners are walking into interviews where the questions AI helped them prepare for are now the least important part of the conversation.
What the pattern tells us about the next 3 years
Put the 7 answers together and the shape of future-of-work hiring gets easier to see.
The first half of the interview is getting more standardized. Bias reduction, hiring compliance, legal defensibility. All of that is pushing companies toward fixed question sets at the top of every interview.
The second half is getting more unpredictable. Hiring managers know candidates are prepping with AI, and they're adjusting.
So the gap between "good prep" and "good interview performance" is widening. A candidate can do everything a traditional program taught them to do and still lose to someone who can think live, adjust to follow-ups, and hold a real conversation under pressure.
That isn't a learner problem. It's a prep problem.
What this means for career teams and workforce programs
If you run a workforce program, a career centre, an employment service, or any training-to-employment pipeline, here's the uncomfortable part.
Your mock interview process was probably designed when interviews were more predictable. One advisor, one candidate, 30 minutes, a list of common questions, some feedback at the end. It worked because the interview the learner was going into looked roughly like the mock.
It doesn't anymore.
The interview your learner is walking into has a standardized front end and a wide-open back end. Your mock has to match that, or the prep is theatre.
Then there's the second problem. Even if your advisors know this, and most of them do, they can't run enough of these mocks. One advisor with 80 people on a caseload cannot do a 30-minute dynamic mock interview with every learner, capture notes on what broke down, score it, flag patterns across the cohort, and follow up on what each person needs to work on next. Not at that volume. Not with the reporting funders are asking for.
So learners get one mock. Maybe two. They get prepped for the checklist. They don't get reps on the part that actually decides the interview.
Placement rates stall, not because the learners aren't ready, but because the program can't scale the kind of prep the job market now requires.
The infrastructure question
What the 7 CEOs described isn't a trend. It's the new shape of hiring. AI has compressed the predictable parts of an interview and stretched out the unpredictable ones. Career teams that can only deliver mocks for the predictable half will watch placement numbers drift, and they won't always know why.
The teams that pull ahead will be the ones that stop thinking of mock interviews as a one-to-one advisor activity and start thinking of their whole prep process as infrastructure. Unlimited reps on live, dynamic interviews. Scored performance data on every learner. Notes captured automatically so advisors walk into the 1:1 already knowing what to coach. Case-level visibility so program leads can see which cohorts are ready and which aren't, before a funder asks.
That's the shift. Not more interview tips. Better rails underneath the whole program.
The CEOs are already hiring this way. The programs that prep people for it will place more of them.
