Amanda NorthcuttFounder & CEO | Keynote Speaker, LevelUp · B2B sales as a solo is HARD. I’ve got you. I help consultants & coaches sell high-ticket services comfortably & confidently, while enjoying consistent, predictable revenue | Founder & CEO | Speaker |

How to Run a First-Round Interview Like a Pro

18 Aug 2025 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

2:05

In this video, Amanda Northcutt walks viewers through a practical framework for conducting first‑round interviews. She begins by emphasizing the need to craft granular, experience‑focused questions that can expose AI‑generated or embellished answers, shifting from abstract philosophy queries to concrete “what have you done” prompts. She then outlines a structured interview flow: level‑setting at the start with a clear time allocation, sharing that schedule with the candidate in advance, monitoring time throughout, and strategically dropping or shortening questions if the conversation becomes overly chatty. Near the end she reserves a brief slot for candidate questions. Throughout the interview she advocates taking detailed notes tied to a rubric so each answer can be scored objectively, enabling automatic ranking of candidates. For second‑round interviews she notes the process is similar but adds a deeper evaluation of mindset and soft skills—growth orientation, collaboration style, and blame‑shifting tendencies—using targeted behavioral questions. The overall message is a step‑by‑step, reproducible method to run efficient, fair, and data‑driven first‑round interviews.

Chapters

So, when we go into preparing for the first-round interview, we want to consider the types of questions that we need to ask next. So, that's just a different level deeper on certain topics that maybe we didn't cover in the application. And we want to make sure that we're getting granular on some of their past experience, especially because people use AI these days. And I see it a lot more in applications recent, more recently in the last couple of years than I have before then. So, you have to prepare that they might have some AI-written questions that maybe actually aren't true for them. So, I like to change the questions so that they're more focused on what have you done versus like, what is your philosophy? So, those are some things I like to do there. And then, as far as actually running the interview, make sure that you're keeping an eye on time. And I always say at the beginning, I like to, what one of my friends calls level setting at the beginning of the interview. I say, let me run you through my little spiel real quick. This is how much time I like to spend on asking you questions, and I'll save this time for questions that you might have at the end. Um, just so they're aware that you're going to be asking questions. I also share that information when they book the call. And then keeping an eye on time. In some cases, you might need to drop certain interview questions if they're a little bit chatty, which can also be something for you to keep in mind of, are they concise? Are they to the point? And then when you get to that, um, like the last couple of questions, I like to say, okay, I have one more question or two more questions just to kind of keep them on track with where you're at with the time. And then, um, allow them that time to ask questions and always take notes. Because, again, like I mentioned earlier, I have this rubric system. It's important to keep the notes for each question that they answer so that you can go back and rate it, because it'll automatically score people. And that's generally what I do, at least for first rounds. And then second rounds is somewhat similar to that. And obviously, there's a lot more we can go into around what types of things do you look for when people answer questions. A lot of it is, what's their mindset? Are they growth-oriented? If I ask questions around how you work with people, are they blaming others? There's a lot of more soft skills that you can into when you're going through interviews there.