Public site for the Structured Interview Toolkit - Full-Time MBA Program · David Eccles School of Business: interviewer scorecard, student prep playbook, mock interview lifecycle, and the shared retired question bank. No server, no accounts, no cost.
▶Live tools:
This README has two parts:
- Part I — User Manual — for students: how structured interviews work and how to practice for them.
- Part II — Operational Documentation — for staff and maintainers: files, the question-pack lifecycle, and chain of custody.
Prepare evidence, not answers.
Many employers hiring Eccles MBAs — including partners using the Eccles Structured Interview Toolkit — run structured interviews: every candidate for a role gets the same questions, scored 1–4 against written behavioral anchors, discussed in a debrief that argues from evidence.
This is good news: an unstructured interview is a charm contest, and charm contests are luck. A structured interview is an evidence review — and evidence can be prepared. The candidate who wins isn't the smoothest talker; it's the one who knows their own track record cold and can present it in scoreable form.
The core mindset shift: stop preparing answers and start preparing evidence. Interviewers using this framework are trained to probe past your delivery — "what did you specifically do?", "what was the result, in numbers?" — until they hit either real evidence or the bottom of the story. Your preparation is making sure there's something solid to hit.
Interviewer side — the Interview Scorecard. The live instrument employers use to score you, in the room, in real time: the 4-point rubric, evidence-note fields, gate rules, and decision thresholds. You are encouraged to open it and explore — transparency is the design. Click Load retired practice bank (students & mocks) and the scorecard fills with real retired questions so you can see the whole machine working. Employers load a confidential question pack for live interviews; the practice bank shows questions only, since probes, red flags, and strong signals ship exclusively in the employer pack.
Candidate side — the Prep Playbook. Your preparation hub: the full rubric with upgrade moves, the role explorer with every role's competency map and gatekeepers, the complete retired question bank, the AI practice coach, and downloads.
Full simulation — the Mock Interview Lifecycle. Where both sides meet: run yourself through all four stages for your target role, speak your answers, get AI-coached on the exact rubric, log your scores, and track progress against the same thresholds employers apply.
The honest summary: nothing about how you'll be scored is hidden from you. The only confidential element in the entire system is the current wording of live questions — and those rotate into your practice bank when they retire. Prepare the competency, not the sentence, and the transparency is all advantage.
| Score | Label | What it sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Does Not Meet | No clear example. Vague, theoretical, or irrelevant; little ownership; can't explain impact. |
| 2 | Partially Meets | A real but basic example. Some relevant actions; limited depth or measurable impact; the interviewer had to dig to find your role. |
| 3 | Meets | Clear, relevant example. Ownership, judgment, structured thinking, named trade-offs, a credible outcome or Learning. |
| 4 | Exceeds | High-complexity example with real impact. Leadership beyond formal authority; a repeatable method; you elevated others. |
What moves a score up one level:
- 2 → 3 is ownership, trade-offs, and a credible result: "I" instead of "we," a decision you can defend, a number or a named outcome.
- 3 → 4 is complexity, method, and lift: a genuinely hard situation, an approach you could repeat, and evidence you made others better.
For competencies from the Eccles MBA Competency Model, interview scores map to your developmental scale: 1 → Advanced Beginner (1–2), 2 → Competent (3–5), 3 → Proficient (6–8), 4 → Expert (9–10). Use your program self-assessments to know which competencies need the most story-building.
Gatekeepers and thresholds. Each role designates 1–2 gatekeeper competencies: score a 1 on one and the candidacy ends regardless of your total. Gatekeepers are assessed twice, by different interviewers. Totals convert to percentages: 80%+ advances · 70–79% advances with discussion · below 60% does not. Identify your target role's gatekeepers in the role explorer and prepare your deepest evidence there first.
| Stage | What happens | Your preparation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Initial Screen (20–30 min) | Motivation, role clarity, one competency. Scored — not a chat. | A two-minute answer connecting your background, this role, and what you'll do in it. Vague enthusiasm reads as a 1. |
| 2 · Hiring Manager (45–60 min) | Deep behavioral evidence on core competencies; first gatekeeper pass. | Your strongest, most quantified stories for the role's top competencies. |
| 3 · Team / Panel (60–90 min) | 2–3 interviewers splitting competencies; often a case or simulation; second gatekeeper pass. | Different stories than Stage 2 — interviewers compare notes; one story stretched across five questions reads as thin evidence. |
| 4 · Final / Readiness (30–45 min) | Values, judgment under pressure, risk re-check, closing. | A real example of a hard call, honestly told — including what it cost you. |
CARL is the storytelling framework taught in your careers class — the same one this entire system coaches and scores against. Structure every story in four beats. The fourth is where 3s become 4s, and most candidates skip it.
| Beat | What to say |
|---|---|
| C — Context / Challenge | What challenge were you facing, for whom, and why did it matter? Two to three sentences — spend your time on Action and Results, not scene-setting. |
| A — Action | What you did, with specifics, in first person singular. "We" answers get probed until an "I" appears — volunteer it first. |
| R — Results | The outcome and its impact on the business, with metrics or data wherever you have them. A miss honestly accounted for beats a vague win. |
| L — Learning | What you learned — about yourself, the work, or people — and how you've used it since. If the result wasn't positive, what you'd do differently. This is the "repeatable method" signal in the 4 anchor. |
Tell, then Show: answer the question directly first, then bring it to life with the CARL story. For variety, some answers land harder led with the Result — "We cut wait times in half; here's how."
On honesty: never inflate or invent. Trained interviewers probe every story from three angles, and a fabricated example collapses under "what did you do next?" — which converts a would-be 3 into a 1 plus a risk flag. A modest real story with a clear Learning outscores an impressive fake one every time.
Where to start: the Top Behavioral Stories track. The Mock Interview Lifecycle's first "role" — Strengths & Weaknesses — Top Behavioral Stories — is built from your careers-class question set plus the classic questions that stump candidates: greatest strength and weakness, failure, challenging feedback, conflict, disagreeing with your manager, a goal you missed, a decision you'd take back. Run it before any role-specific track: the answers you build there are your first story bank.
Build 8–10 stories before your first interview. Each story should serve 2–3 competencies, and together they should cover your target role's full competency map:
- Inventory your raw material — projects, conflicts, failures, launches, analyses, from work and the MBA.
- Pick 8–10 with a real result or a real lesson — include at least two failures or hard calls (Stage 4 runs on them).
- Map each story to the competencies it evidences. A competency with no story is a question you can't answer.
- Attach one true number to every story — revenue, hours, percent, headcount, deadline.
- Write the Learning line for each: what you learned and how you've used it since.
7.1 The retired question bank. The playbook publishes the full retired employer question bank — real questions rotated out of live use precisely so you can practice on them. Filter by your target role; start with the gatekeepers.
7.2 The AI practice coach. Every retired question has a "Practice with AI" button. Copy the prompt into Claude or another AI assistant and it will interview you, probe like a trained interviewer, score you on the exact rubric, and name the one change that raises each score a level. The prompt orders the AI not to flatter you — a candid 2 helps more than a kind 3.
7.3 The full mock: Mock Interview Lifecycle.
- Pick your track. Start with Strengths & Weaknesses — Top Behavioral Stories, then switch to your target role.
- Answer out loud. The record button transcribes as you speak (Chrome, Edge, Safari); typing always works.
- Copy the stage's coaching prompt into an AI assistant — it scores each answer with quoted evidence, checks CARL and Tell-then-Show, and checks gates.
- Log the AI's scores back into the tool — it computes stage and lifecycle percentages on the employer thresholds.
- Track your progression. Stage runs trend on each stage tab's sparkline; complete all four stages to save a full mock on the Final tab's chart. Export a backup occasionally — the log lives only in your browser.
- Finish with the final debrief prompt and copy the coach summary to bring to your career coaching appointment.
7.4 Peer mock interviews. Run full stages with a classmate — on the real instrument. The interviewer opens the Scorecard, clicks "Load retired practice bank," and scores you live on the actual employer tool. Swap. Bring your scores to your career coach.
The practice rules: out loud, never in your head · score yourself before reading the AI's score — the gap is your homework · re-run the same question after coaching. One question practiced to a 4 beats five practiced to a 2.
- Probes are gifts. "What was your specific role?" is the interviewer offering you a path to a higher score. Answer precisely, without defensiveness.
- No example? Say so and offer the nearest real one. Honesty reads as a signal; improvisation reads as a 1.
- Rehearse your numbers so they arrive naturally — two or three figures per story.
- Situational questions score reasoning: name your assumptions, first steps, and the trade-off you're accepting, out loud.
- Your question time is evidence too — specific questions about the role's first six months demonstrate Strategic Alignment.
Preparing with AI — practice, coaching, story refinement — is legitimate and encouraged. Real-time AI assistance during a live interview is not: most employers prohibit it, and it converts a preparation advantage into an integrity risk on a framework with an ethics gatekeeper. AI sharpens your evidence before the room; only you carry it into the room.
This framework runs on the same 22 competencies as your program self-assessments. Your weakest self-assessed competencies are your weakest interview evidence — which tells you which stories to build next. Interview preparation and competency development are the same activity viewed from two ends, and your career coach can see both. Bring your practice scores to coaching.
- Role dropdown — 10 common MBA roles, each mapped to 5–7 competencies drawn from the Eccles MBA Competency Model and the role competency menu.
- Stage selector — the canonical four-stage lifecycle (Initial Screen → Hiring Manager/Leader → Team/Panel → Final/Readiness). Each stage shows only its assigned competencies; gatekeepers appear in two stages.
- Rubric-integrated scoring — the 4-point behaviorally anchored scale from the Employer Edition guide, with the anchor text shown at the point of scoring. MBA Model competencies also display the 1–10 developmental mapping.
- Live gate rules — a score of 1 on a gatekeeper immediately overrides the band to Do Not Advance; two or more risk flags trigger a hiring-manager-review warning.
- Exports — Print/Save PDF, copy as text, download CSV. Autosaves to the interviewer's browser only.
| File | Public? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
index.html |
Yes — deploy to GitHub Pages | Interviewer scorecard. Framework, competency maps, and rubric only — no interview questions. |
student_playbook.html |
Yes — deploy to GitHub Pages | Student prep playbook: stages, rubric, role explorer, AI practice coach. No questions. |
eccles_question_pack.json |
No — never commit or deploy | Confidential employer file: 40 question sets (2 behavioral + 1 situational + probes + red flags + strong signals each) and 2 role-motivation screen questions per role. Distributed directly to employer partners by Eccles Career Services. |
Eccles_MBA_Interview_Prep_Guide_Student_Edition.docx |
Yes | Student prep guide (method, story bank, worked examples). Linked from the playbook. |
Eccles_MBA_Interview_Prep_Student_Overview.pptx |
Yes | Student overview deck with speaker notes. Linked from the playbook. |
mock_interview.html |
Yes | Student mock-interview lifecycle: 4 stages, speech-to-text answers, per-stage AI coaching prompts, score logging with gates/thresholds, final debrief export. |
retired_bank.js |
Yes | Single source of truth for retired questions, competency definitions, and role maps — loaded by both student_playbook.html and mock_interview.html. Edit this one file when a pack rotates. |
Eccles_MBA_Mock_Interview_Coach_Brief.docx |
Yes | One-page brief for career coaches: how to read a student's mock-interview summary. Linked from the coach export. |
README.md |
Yes | This file. |
Why the split: the student-facing edition of the framework deliberately shares competencies and rubrics but not verbatim questions. Publishing the pack on a public page would defeat that. Interviewers load the pack locally via the Load question pack button — the file never leaves their machine.
Add this line to .gitignore before the first commit:
eccles_question_pack.json
- Create the repo; commit
index.html,student_playbook.html,README.md, and the one-line.gitignoreonly. The.gitignorefile's entire contents must be the single lineeccles_question_pack.json— it names the file git must exclude; never paste the pack's contents into it. - Settings → Pages → deploy from the main branch.
- Send
eccles_question_pack.jsonto employer partners directly (email or secure share). Each interviewer clicks Load question pack at the start of a session. The tool is fully usable without the pack (rubric, scoring, gates, exports) — only question text is withheld.
The pack travels person-to-person, never through this repo. GitHub's web upload ignores .gitignore, so the protection is the protocol, not the file:
- Master copy lives in Eccles Career Services cloud storage (Box / Google Drive / OneDrive), access-scoped to career services staff. Upload the
.jsonfile as-is; never convert it to a Docs/Word format — converted copies will not load in the scorecard. - Eccles → employer: when an employer partner adopts the toolkit, Career Services sends the current pack to the employer's recruiting or HR lead — email attachment or a share link scoped to them.
- Employer lead → interviewers: the recruiting/HR lead forwards the file to their interviewers directly (email or their own access-controlled drive — never a public intranet page or wiki), with this instruction: "Save this file anywhere on your computer. In the scorecard, click Load question pack and select it — it loads locally in your browser and is never uploaded anywhere."
- On rotation: Career Services sends the new version to employer leads and asks them to delete prior copies; the retired version's questions are published in the student playbook (see lifecycle above).
If the pack is ever posted anywhere public, treat it as a rotation trigger — retire, publish, reissue — not an emergency.
The pack rotates. Each version lives one of two lives, in order:
- Live — the current pack (e.g., v2). Direct-send to employer partners only. Never committed, never deployed, never quoted in public files.
- Retired — when a new version replaces it, the previous version's questions are published as the practice bank by adding them to
retired_bank.js(which feeds both the playbook and the mock interview tool).
Rules that keep this honest: only fully rotated-out versions are published — never a partial or current pack; rotation happens on its own schedule (or after any exposure), never to feed the practice bank; and if a live pack is ever exposed, the response is the same as a planned rotation — retire it, publish it, issue the next version. The system is designed to metabolize leaks, not to pretend they can't happen.
Scores and candidate names autosave to localStorage in the interviewer's browser and are never transmitted. On shared machines: export, then use Clear this interview.
Edit eccles_question_pack.json — the structure is competencies.{Name}.{b1,b2,s,probes,rf,ss} and screens.{roleId}[2]. New competency sets can be generated with the Appendix D template in the Employer Edition guide; calibrate with the interview team before live use. Bump version when you rotate.
Adaptable framework, not a certification. Hiring decisions — and legal/HR compliance for them — remain with Cory Burk and the Full-Time MBA Program · David Eccles School of Business.
Adaptable framework, not a certification. Hiring decisions — and legal and HR compliance for them - remain entirely with the employer. Developed by Cory Burk, Senior Manager, Program Management · Full-Time MBA Program · David Eccles School of Business. © 2026 University of Utah, David Eccles School of Business. All rights reserved.