How do you ensure someone is qualified?
That’s not the question you should ask in the interview, that’s the question you should ask when you’re preparing the position for posting. We often use a degree or other formal certification as proof of qualification, but there is a risk in using that particular filter: it weeds out qualified people and includes people who would not be actually effective at the job. But fully assessing the entire field might be impossible, so what do you do?
You find other ways to limit the field to people who are meet your desired qualifications. For example, I limit the field in my auditions based on location (you must attend my school) or timing (there is a limited audition window). I also limit the field by making it self-selecting: the audition requirements reflect the requirements of the ensemble, and those who wouldn’t succeed in the ensemble often remove themselves from the audition. Finally, I weight my assessment to include a constellation of skills and balance them based on the values I think the ensemble reflects.
I think that as we move forward, we are going to see more and more people who are qualified for jobs that they are not “qualified” for based on formal certification. We’d do well to make our processes more open to these kind of candidates.