In another comment I was also poking some holes into the “structured” comments, what you say above was in my head but I couldn’t quite articulate it. Well said.

I think checklist interviews miss the mark as you say. You may not have a perfect rubric, but I’m not grading students on a history exam; I am evaluating them for a role in a given position. In the limited time we have to speak, I want to use my intuition and experience as an interviewer and engineer to rapidly get to where the candidate is strong, and where they may have issues.