Interview Recipes

A recipe site for interviews

Build a structured, research-backed interview in minutes.

Browse vetted questions, save them into an interview recipe you can print and take into the room. Hire the best candidate, not the best talker.

Start your first recipe — freeBrowse the questions

109 questions across 10 competencies are out of the oven — every one a full card, like the one on this page.

problem solving

Tell me about a time you were confident about the cause of a problem and turned out to be wrong. How did you find out, and what did you do next?

Why this works

Confident misdiagnosis is where problem-solving actually fails — not for lack of analysis, but analysis aimed at defending a belief. The "how did you find out" clause forces a concrete account instead of a philosophy of humility, and shows whether the candidate tests assumptions or protects them.

What good looks like

A specific incident with a real cost, told without blame; the signal that broke the assumption named precisely; and a changed habit since — disconfirming checks run earlier, confidence treated as a cue to verify rather than a reason to stop.

Red flags

No example available ("my instincts are usually right"), the error pinned entirely on others or on missing information, or the story stops at the discovery with nothing done differently since.

A real card from the library, not a mockup. See it in place

The method

Three steps, no improvising

  1. Pick your ingredients

    Browse vetted questions by competency. Every one is a full card: why it works, follow-up probes, what good looks like, red flags.

  2. Assemble your recipe

    Save questions into an interview template — sections, order, and timing — so every candidate gets the same well-built hour.

  3. Take it into the room

    Print a clean one-pager with space for notes, or share a read-only link with your co-interviewer.

House rules

  • Every question is free to read. No login to browse.
  • Every card is vetted by a human. No AI-generated filler.
  • An account does one thing: it saves your recipes.
  • No demos to book, no sales calls, no pre-ticked boxes.

Why structured

The research is unusually clear

Meta-analyses spanning more than 85 years of selection research keep finding the same thing: structured interviews — same questions, same order, answers scored against criteria decided in advance — are among the strongest predictors of how someone will actually do the job. Unstructured conversations sit far behind, because they mostly measure confidence, talkativeness, and how much the candidate resembles the interviewer.

Structure is also the fairer format: every candidate gets the same interview, so the comparison is between answers, not impressions. The catch is that a good structured interview takes real preparation — and the first interview locks in the structure for every candidate after it. That preparation is the whole job of this site.

Why this exists

We’ve all winged an interview — old doc, googled questions, improvising from memory. Like instant noodles: fine once, a problem as a diet. I’m building the site I wish every hiring manager I’ve worked with had open in the next tab. It’s new and built in public — if something’s missing, tell me. Early users get to shape the pantry.

— Max Korpinen · Kops Works

The newsletter

One email when the kitchen opens

Leave your email and you’ll get one message when the full question base lands — nothing else.

Your next interview is worth preparing.

Free while we cook. An account just saves your recipes.

Start your first recipe — freeor browse the questions first