The Best Hiring Questions – What to Ask and Why

Ask the RIGHT questions and you’ll get the RIGHT candidate!

The best interview questions give you real information to base a hiring decision on beyond a “gut feel.”  By truly evaluating a candidate’s aptitude, experience, and motivations, you can ensure you’re making the most educated hiring decisions possible.

Based on our extensive candidate search experience, here’s 5 great practices and questions for employers to help you effectively interview candidates:

5 GREAT PRACTICES FOR EMPLOYERS:

1. Consistency: For each position, have uniform questions in place to ask of every candidate.
2. Be on Time: You never want to feel rushed when interviewing a candidate.
3. Resume Review: Give yourself time to review each resume prior to the interview.
4. 80/20 Rule: Keep in mind that the candidate should be the one speaking 80% of the interview.
5. Timely Feedback: Be timely and responsive with your feedback whether its positive or negative.

GREAT INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO ASK:

1. Planning, Prioritizing & Goal Setting: Describe a time when you forecasted several years out to identify what customer needs would be. How did you put your organization in a position to meet those needs?
2. Quality: Describe a situation in which a crucial deadline was nearing but you didn’t want to compromise quality. How did you deal with it?
3. Reading the System: Different people have different motivators. When have you been successful in discovering a key person’s motivation and used that knowledge to bring about an important change. Be specific.
4. Resource Management: Think of a time when you prepared and managed a budget for a new project. How did you handle this?
5. The Closer: Why do you want to want to work here?

Want to add some out-of-the-box interview questions? Inc. Magazine recently asked 5 C-level executives on what they like to ask:

• What’s the biggest misconception people have of you?  “It’s interesting to see how self aware candidates are.” -Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
• What’s most important to you in your work? “It gets to the point of what I want to know, beyond skills and experience.” -Evan Williams, Co-Founder of Twitter
• Describe a recent project and how you could have done it 10 times better.  “We want people who can always think bigger.” -Aaron Levie, Co-Founder and CEO of Box
• How do you unplug?  “People are eager to show employers how they’ll work themselves to the bone. That’s not good for them or the company.” -Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post Media Group
• Why wouldn’t I hire you?  “You get the most honest answers – because it’s not a question people anticipate being asked.” -Bobbi Brown, Founder of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics

Building a great organization starts by having great people aboard.  We hope this information helps you have more productive interviews that lead to identifying the right talent.

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