Around thirty minutes for a screening call, forty-five to sixty for a competency interview, and up to ninety for a technical or working session. Set the length from the number of competencies you are assessing, allow ten minutes for candidate questions, and end on time. Longer interviews rarely produce better evidence.
The evidence you need, not convention. A competency assessed properly takes roughly ten to fifteen minutes: the [structured interview question](/interview-questions), a real example, and two or three follow-ups that establish what the candidate personally did. Multiply by the number of competencies that round owns, add ten minutes for the candidate's questions and a few for context and closing, and you have your length. Most rounds should own two or three competencies, which lands at forty-five to sixty minutes. If your planned agenda needs ninety minutes of questioning, the round is doing too much and should be split. Working sessions and technical exercises are the exception, since the task itself sets the clock.
Attention falls on both sides. Past the first hour, interviewer notes get shorter and questions become conversational, so the last stretch typically contributes rapport rather than assessment. Candidates tire too, and fatigue penalises people who are already nervous, which is a fairness problem rather than a discrimination signal. Long unstructured time also invites drift into topics nobody planned to score, which is where informal judgement enters. If you genuinely need two hours of contact, split it across two shorter sessions with different interviewers assessing different competencies. You will get more usable evidence from ninety minutes structured across two conversations than from one long meeting. Two focused conversations also give you two independent readings, which is worth more than one long impression.
At least ten minutes, protected rather than squeezed into whatever remains. This is not a courtesy. It is where the candidate decides whether to keep going, and in a competitive market that decision matters as much as your assessment. Cutting questions short because you overran signals that their evaluation of you is unimportant, which is precisely what strong candidates notice. Reserve the time in the agenda and tell them at the start how the session is structured. The questions people ask are also useful evidence in themselves: specific, well-informed questions about the work indicate preparation and genuine interest in a way that rehearsed answers do not. Note the questions they ask in the scorecard, since they are evidence you would otherwise lose.
Write the agenda with minutes against each section and share it with the interviewer beforehand. Give every round a fixed question set so nobody improvises their way past the hour. Book a buffer between interviews so an overrun does not cascade through the day and leave a later candidate waiting, which is one of the most common complaints in candidate feedback. Automated booking through [interview scheduling software](/interview-scheduling-software) enforces the buffers for you. If a conversation is going well and you want longer, book a second session rather than extending, because the candidate almost certainly has something after you. Tell candidates the finish time at the start as well, so they can plan the rest of their day around it.
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