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Guide
Prepare interview questions
Write the set of questions every interviewer for a role will ask and score, so candidates are judged against the same list.
Before you start
- A role that lets you manage recruitment. In the built-in set, administrators have that permission, and so do members of the “HR Managers” group. Without it the “Templates” page is not in your menu. Interviewers can read a guide but cannot change one.
- Good to know: the app calls a set of interview questions an interview guide. When you assign an interviewer, the same thing is listed under “Interview Template (Optional)”.
- The job the questions are for, if you want a guide for that job only. See Hire someone. When a job is created, Zonitix also makes a starter guide for it, which you can edit instead of starting from nothing.
Create the guide
Step 1: Open the templates page
Go to HR & TalentTemplates. The page is headed “Hiring templates”. The card “Coverage for open roles” lists each open role and, under “INTERVIEW GUIDE”, whether it has a guide of its own, falls back on a general one (shown as “Global”), or has none.
Step 2: Start a new guide
Click “New template ▾” at the top right and choose “Interview guide”. For a role with no guide, you can click “Create interview guide” on its row of the coverage card instead. A window opens with three steps: “Details”, “Questions” and “Review & save”.
To change an existing guide, open the “Interview guides” tab and click its row.
Step 3: Fill in the details
Enter a “Template Name”; you cannot continue without one. “Round Name (e.g. Technical, Screening)” says which interview the guide is for. In “Specific Job (Optional)”, pick the job, or leave it on “Global (All Jobs)” to offer the guide for every job. “Description (Internal notes)” is for your own guidance to interviewers. Click “Next”.
Write the questions
Step 4: Add a question
Click “ADD QUESTION”. Type the question, and give it a “Category” by typing one or clicking a preset: “Technical”, “Behavioral”, “Cultural Fit”, “Situational” or “Leadership”.
Two optional boxes help the interviewer: “Interviewer context (optional)”, for why you ask and what to probe for, and “What a good answer looks like (optional)”, which is shown to the interviewer under the question.
Step 5: Say how much each question counts
“Weight” is “Normal (×1)”, “Important (×2)” or “Critical (×3)”. The bar “SHARE OF THE OVERALL SCORE” shows what part of the total each question now carries, so you do not have to make the numbers add up yourself.
Click “Mark must-have” on a question the role cannot do without. A low score on a must-have flags the candidate whatever their average is.
Under “Rating anchors (optional) — what each level means” you can describe what a 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 look like. Interviewers see these next to the rating, which helps two people score the same answer the same way. Leave them blank and the question is rated with plain stars.
Step 6: Check the job's competencies are covered
If you picked a job that lists competencies, the box “JOB COMPETENCIES COVERED” ticks each one that a question covers (its category is that competency, or its text mentions it), and offers a button to add a question for one that has none. Use the arrows on a question to move it up or down, and the bin to remove it.
Step 7: Optional: let AI draft questions, then edit them
Click “AI GENERATE QUESTIONS” at the bottom left. It can take a while; the button reads “GENERATING…” until it is done. The drafted questions are added to the end of your list; nothing you wrote is replaced. Picking a job in step 3 first gives questions aimed at that role.
Treat them as a first draft. Read every one, change or delete what does not fit, and set the weights yourself. Nothing is saved until you save the guide. AI can be switched off for your company or limited to chosen people; see Turn AI on or off and choose the model.
Save it and use it
Step 8: Review and save
Click “Next” to reach “Review & save”, read the summary, and click “Save guide”. A question left with no text is dropped when you save; the page tells you how many.
Step 9: Give it to an interviewer
On a candidate at the Interview stage, open the “Interviews” tab, pick the person in “Select interviewer”, choose your guide under “Interview Template (Optional)” and click “ASSIGN”. The list offers the guides made for that candidate’s job and the “Global” ones. If you leave it on “Standard Competencies”, the interview is set up without your guide.
The interviewer then sees your questions when they run the interview; see Run an interview and submit your scorecard.
What you should see
The guide is listed on the “Interview guides” tab with its job, or “Global”, in the “SCOPE” column.
On “Coverage for open roles”, the role now shows a tick and the guide’s name under “INTERVIEW GUIDE”.
When you assign an interviewer for that job, the guide is in the “Interview Template (Optional)” list, with its round name in brackets.
If something goes wrong
- Next or Save guide is greyed out
- The guide has no name. Go back to Details and fill in Template Name.
- "Could not generate questions right now — try again."
- The AI did not answer. Try once more. If it keeps failing, write the questions by hand, and ask an administrator to check Turn AI on or off and choose the model.
- "The AI questions arrived after that guide was closed, so they were not added."
- You closed the guide, or opened another, while the AI was still working. Open the guide you want them in and click AI GENERATE QUESTIONS again.
- Closing the window warns that edits have not been saved
- Closing now discards the questions, weights and rating anchors you changed. Go back and click through to Save guide first.
- Your guide is not in the list when you assign an interviewer
- It was made for a different job. Open it, set Specific Job (Optional) to this job or to Global (All Jobs), and save.
Still stuck? See When something goes wrong, or Contact Zonitix support.