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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.

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

Problem solving & judgment

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?

Follow-up probes

  • What evidence first made you suspicious of your own diagnosis?
  • What would have happened if you'd been wrong for another month?
  • What do you do differently now when you feel that certain?
See the full card

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.

Communication & influencingjuniorsituational

Your manager has settled on an approach you're convinced will fail, and your one attempt to say so got a polite "noted". What do you do now?

Follow-up probes

  • What does a second attempt look like, concretely?
  • When do you commit to their plan for real?
  • Does it change if the failure lands on someone else?
See the full card

Why this works

The dilemma has no free move: pushing again risks the relationship, dropping it means watching a mistake happen. For candidates without much work history it still yields a scoreable answer, and the already-overruled setup blocks the rehearsed "I'd speak up" escape.

What good looks like

A second, better-built attempt — new evidence or a different frame, not the same words louder — a named point where they commit and execute fully, and their concern registered without ceremony.

Planning & delivering resultssenior

Tell me about a months-long piece of work you kept moving while shorter, louder things competed for your attention. What kept it from stalling?

Follow-up probes

  • What did a normal week of progress look like?
  • When did it come closest to stalling, and what restarted it?
  • How did you notice drift before it got expensive?
See the full card

Why this works

Long work rarely gets killed; it just stops getting touched. The question surfaces whether the candidate runs actual machinery for momentum — visible interim milestones, a standing cadence, protected time — and whether they can spot drift before a quarter quietly disappears.

What good looks like

A cadence that made progress inspectable by others, interim milestones that shipped something real, an honest near-stall story with the restart, and early-warning signals they were genuinely watching.

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.

The pantry

Browse by competency

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

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