Forget Guesswork: Use These 5 Interview Styles to Hire Smarter
Plus a cheat sheet to help you build your next interview loop.
Why Interviewing Needs a Rethink
In our last post, we talked about how most interviews are still stuck in the past — vague questions, conflicting feedback, and too much reliance on gut feel.
Since then, we’ve been working closely with teams that want something better:
Interviews that are more structured, more consistent, and actually help them make better decisions.
As we build Messa, we’ve been focused on one foundational piece:
Helping interviewers speak a shared language.
Instead of reinventing the process every time you open a role, what if every interview loop started from a proven, flexible framework — one designed to generate signal?
That’s where these five interview styles come in.
🎯 The 5 Interview Styles We Use at Messa
| Style | What It Tests | Best For | Inspired By |
|---|---|---|---|
| Execution & Ownership | Accountability, scale, process thinking | Ops, PMs, Eng Managers | Amazon |
| Problem-Solving Intelligence | Agility, systems thinking, technical depth | Engineers, PMs, Analytics | |
| Structured Thinking | Analytical rigor under pressure | BizOps, Strategy, GMs | McKinsey |
| Collaboration & EQ | Empathy, teamwork, conflict resolution | Managers, CX, Cross-functional | Atlassian |
| Career Deep Dive | Trajectory, consistency, self-awareness | Senior roles, Generalists | Topgrading |
Each one gives you a different lens. Together, they help build interview loops that are both focused and well-rounded.
📚 Why These Styles Work
These aren’t just nice ideas — they’re grounded in real research and hiring systems that have been pressure-tested at scale.
- Amazon built its “bar-raiser” model on deep ownership and clear accountability.
- Google ran validation studies showing structured problem-solving questions had real predictive value.
- McKinsey and other consultancies have long tested structured thinking as a proxy for adaptability.
- Atlassian made emotional intelligence and team fit a hiring cornerstone.
- Topgrading's deep-dive method has become a go-to for spotting patterns across careers — especially for senior hires.
We took the best of what works — and adapted it into something lean, flexible, and usable by any team.
🧠 Try It Yourself
We built a free tool to help you design your own interview loop using these five styles.
✅ Tailored by role
✅ Designed for clarity and signal
✅ Comes with structured, ready-to-use questions
You don’t have to start from scratch or build some giant competency matrix.
Just use the cheat sheet as your starting point.
- Enter the role and company stage
- Get the style that will give you the highest signal
- Use the sample questions as-is or adapt them
- Assign that style clearly to one interviewer on the panel
It’s simple. It works. And it gives everyone clarity about what they’re there to assess.
What We’re Building
This cheat sheet is just a small glimpse of what we’re working on at Messa.
We’re building tools to help interviewers be better —
before the interview, during the conversation, and when it’s time to decide.
Structured when it matters. Flexible when it counts.
All designed to reduce noise, surface real signal, and help teams hire with more clarity and confidence.
If you care about interviewing well, we think you’ll like what’s coming.