Learn behavioral question structure, job-related vs. illegal question distinctions, and technical difficulty calibration vocabulary.
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What does 'STAR-compatible question design' mean when creating behavioral interview questions?
STAR-compatible questions ask for a past experience ('Tell me about a time...', 'Describe a situation where...') so candidates answer with real evidence — Situation, Task, Action, Result. Hypothetical questions ('What would you do?') are easier to answer generically and harder to calibrate across candidates.
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What is a 'job-related question' in interview design?
Job-relatedness is the legal and psychometric standard: each interview question must assess something necessary to perform the job. 'Tell me about a time you debugged a production incident under time pressure' is job-related for a senior engineer; 'Are you planning to have children?' is not job-related and is illegal.
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Which of these is an example of an illegal interview question in most jurisdictions?
Questions about nationality, religion, age, disability, marital status, pregnancy, or family plans are illegal in most jurisdictions because they assess protected characteristics unrelated to job performance. Interviewers must be trained to recognise these and redirect if a candidate volunteers such information.
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What is 'difficulty calibration' in technical interview question design?
Difficulty calibration ensures a question is neither too easy (no differentiation) nor too hard (everyone fails, no signal) for the target level. Calibration involves: having internal engineers at the level solve the problem, measuring time to solve, and tracking historical candidate success rates in the interview rubric.
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What is a 'question rubric' in technical interview design?
A question rubric specifies what each performance level looks like: e.g., 'Strong Hire: identifies optimal algorithm, discusses edge cases proactively, clean code with clear variable names. No Hire: produces a working brute-force but cannot discuss time/space complexity or improve it when prompted.' Rubrics are essential for calibrated, defensible scorecards.