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Interviews in Hiring System

Learn how to set up, customise, and conduct structured interviews as part of your hiring process in Alva - from AI-generated questions to scoring and collaboration.

Written by Pernilla Ahl

Ways to build your interviews

Interviews are a core assessment method in Alva's Hiring System. There are several ways to build your interviews:

  • AI-generated interviews - Architect generates structured interviews with questions and scoring anchors based on your role criteria

  • Questions from the content library - add questions from your organisation's shared interview content library, including Alva's ready-made questions or your own custom ones.

  • Interview templates - use your own pre-built, reusable interview setups to standardise interviews across roles and teams

  • Custom questions - create your own questions directly in the interview for a specific job

  • Personality content generation - generate personalised questions based on a candidate's personality test results

AI-generated interviews

When you generate an assessment plan in Step 3: Design Assessment Plan, Architect creates structured interviews based on the criteria you defined in

Step 2: Set Role Criteria. Questions are generated as situational or past-behaviour types, and each includes scoring anchors so interviewers can rate candidates consistently.

To view and edit the generated questions:

  • Edit questions on the interview card in the Design step

  • The interview card shows which skills have been assigned to the interview

  • Expand a question to see its assigned skills, description, questions, and scoring guidelines

If you have already completed the job creation flow, you can access your interviews by clicking Assessment plan in the top right corner of the job, then Edit questions on the interview you want to change.

What you can do with generated questions:

  • Regenerate - click Regenerate on any question to get a new AI-generated alternative based on the same skills

  • Add more skills - click + Add more skills to see available skills from the role and add them to the question

  • Add generative - click Add generative to generate a new AI-created question based on selected criteria. Up to three different criteria can be combined to generate a single question

  • Remove a question - click the delete icon Any skills tied to the removed question move to Job description → Not used in any of the assessments, so you can reassign them later

Adding interview questions from the content library

In addition to AI-generated questions, you can add questions from your organisation's Interview Content library - a shared collection of criteria and questions that your team has built or customised over time.

To add a question from the library:

  1. Open the interview by clicking Edit questions on the interview card

  2. At the bottom of the questions list, click Add from library

  3. Browse or search for the criterion you want to add

  4. Select it to add it to the interview

You can also click Create new to write a custom question from scratch.

💡Note: If your organisation already has a competency framework or existing interview questions, Alva's team can help you import them into the content library. Reach out to your CSM or use the chat in the bottom right corner to get started.

Using an interview template

If you prefer not to use Architect's generated interview, you can replace it with an interview template - a reusable setup that your team has created in advance.

Interview templates are managed in the Interview Template section under the Assessment tab. A template defines which criteria and questions are included, so you can standardise interviews across roles and teams.

To use a template instead of a generated interview:

  1. In the Design step, click the three-dot menu (⋯) on the interview card and select Remove interview

  2. Click Add assessment and select Interview

  3. Choose the interview template you want to use

  4. The template's criteria, questions, and scoring anchors are added to the job

You can still edit the interview after adding a template - adjust questions, reorder criteria, or add additional content as needed. Any changes made to the template in the job will not affect the template in the library or other jobs this template has been added to.

If you have already completed the job creation flow, you can access your interviews by clicking Assessment plan in the top right corner of the job while in the stages view.

Personality content generation

Architect can generate personalised interview questions based on a candidate's personality test results. When enabled, these questions are tailored to the specific candidate - focusing on personality facets that are most relevant for the role where the candidate scored lowest. This gives the candidate a chance to demonstrate strengths in areas where their test results were lower.

Personality-based questions are generated per candidate, so they will differ from one candidate to the next. They are designed to complement - not replace - the standard interview questions.

To learn more about how this feature works and how to enable it, see Generative interview content.

Any Questions?

Use the chat in the bottom right corner to connect with a member of our support team.

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