Finding the right questions with which to interview potential candidates is not always as easy as it might first appear. Many recruiters struggle with this step, leading to inefficient interviews with stagnant questions. These then make it harder to discover how good someone is at a job.
Are you having similar issues? If so, you'll want to know what the best questions to ask are if you want good results.
Below, we have broken down all the potential types of interview questions into several categories. You can then use these to determine what you need to know about a good candidate. This will allow you to identify people who have the greatest talent and fit best with your organization.
So, get ready to improve your recruitment process and make better hiring decisions. Read on to learn more hiring best practices you should incorporate into your next candidate evaluation.
Behavioral Questions
One of the first focuses of your questions should be the past experiences of the person being interviewed. This is a very revealing part of your candidate evaluation process. It allows you to learn how someone might act in the future based on their past behaviors.
This is very important on two levels. First, it helps you determine how well people are at working with others. This can bring to light red and green flags when it comes to how they respond to problems in the workplace. It can also help you learn how a candidate interacts with others in the workplace, as well as their attitudes toward authority.
If you discover that someone has a proactive attitude, then that is often a sure sign that they will repeat that behavior. It can thus give you strong predictions about the person's methods for handling soft skill issues such as:
- Conflict resolution in high-stress environments
- Teamwork in collaborative projects
- Team leadership and delegation
- Confidence in failure or success
If the person can offer you specific examples, then interview techniques such as these go a long way to showing you the true colors of an applicant.
Situational Questions
These questions present the interviewee with hypothetical scenarios. You can then watch their process as they engage in dynamic problem-solving.
This can help you understand whether their methods for handling difficult mental challenges match those of the rest of your team.
Questions like these can test aspects of a candidate such as:
- Adaptability
- Critical thinking
- Grace under pressure
- "Outside-the-box" thinking
Depending on the nature of your business, you may need more or less of the above attributes. Thus, consider the answers you are looking for carefully. Be aware, though, that someone may offer you an answer you did not expect and still be a good fit for your business.
Situational questions can also help you gauge a candidate's ability to maintain an ethical stance. Knowing more about such things can show you how they balance company policies and personal values.
Where possible, make these questions relevant to your business. For example, you could ask how someone would handle a tight deadline or unexpected obstacles with planning. These give you much more realistic feedback on how a person will interact with any team you put them in.
While questions such as "Are there more doors or wheels in the world?" can have more engagement from an applicant, they only have limited value. Thus, if you use them, do so sparingly.
Technical Questions
These are up-front methods for testing an applicant's specific knowledge and expertise. Using these, you can check whether they have the specialized skills necessary to complete the role for which you want to hire them.
Such questions will be very different depending on the industry you are in. For example, if you work in the software business, candidates may expect you to present them with coding challenges. If you are a financial institution or accountant firm, then you should give the applicant financial analysis work to perform.
These questions help you measure how much learning a candidate has gained from previous jobs or education. Thus, tailor them to the industry you are in to get the best handle on whether a person understands what will be required of them on a day-to-day basis.
You can even give specific examples of issues your team has needed to handle and ask how the individual would go about solving them. You are not even looking for a solution most of the time. Instead, you want to see their problem-solving methodology to see if it is both practical and a cultural fit for your team.
If you have a specific problem that is troubling your team, you could even ask this person to consider the issue for you. While this will not always give you a solution, it may give you a good insight into how the person can offer you a new perspective.
Learning that someone offers a diverse point of view compared to the rest of your team could reveal that they are the perfect hire for you.
Technical Skills Tests
If you find someone who does well at general technical questions, you can often give them more specific technical tests. These can provide practical assessments of someone's ability to solve problems. They are also standardized, giving you a better method to compare applicants.
These types of tests can include:
- Coding exercise
- Software simulations
- Case studies
- Roleplay scenarios
These tests allow you to grow your understanding of the candidate's broad problem-solving methods. They also help you verify whether they have any of the specific skills they claim in their resume.
As well as assessing a candidate's specific skillset, these tests can also help you measure how well someone works under time pressure. If you are hiring for a role with strict deadlines, it can give you an insight into their stress management and how efficient they are. It also shows what they are willing to sacrifice to get a job done in terms of quality.
Practical tests can also verify someone's attention to relevant detail and accuracy. Should they submit the work in an unpolished state, it both shows a lack of care when it comes to the test and may reflect a similar attitude with real work.
Make sure to align these tests with the unique requirements of the role you wish to hire for, though. Do not waste someone's time by asking them to perform work that does not match the job you intend to give them. If you fail to do this, not only will you not get useful results but the candidate will also gain false expectations of what the role entails.
Cultural Compatibility Questions
It is all well and good if someone has the technical prowess to be a leading member of a team, but if they do not gel, then they are only going to make more problems. You need to question people on whether they fit in.
This can sometimes feel harsh, as it might relate to the background of the individual in question. Instead, you want to focus on the office culture the person exemplifies. It is also important that you ensure you separate this question from inherent cultural biases.
Good questions in this category can include:
- How do you prefer to celebrate team achievements?
- If your team could learn one new skill or team tradition, what would you recommend?
- What would be your ideal office environment?
- How do you prefer to receive feedback and recognition?
- How do you stay motivated in the workplace during stressful periods?
Each of these, alongside asking for examples, can lead to a clear understanding of how the person is likely to react to changes in circumstances. It can show you who will thrive and produce more work and who is likely to create friction.
You can also use this to discover people who align the best with your company's core values. This means you can discover people who will stand alongside you when competition is fierce because they believe in what you are trying to do.
Professional Competency Questions
Not all questions relate directly to the hard skills needed in a job. You also need to ask about the softer skills. These are non-technical and largely revolve around interacting with other people in the workplace.
Focus your interview strategies on querying areas that the candidate is likely to involve themselves in, such as:
- Project management
- Team communication
- Leadership possibilities
- Interacting with superiors
- Communicating with customers
- Following instructions
You want to find someone who will keep a cool head when handling difficult issues. They need to be able to complete their work on a technical level and perform the above to a high standard.
Another very important question is to ask how people have reflected on the outcome of experiences. This shows they have the capacity for self-improvement and personal growth over and above being told how to handle issues. This can be very useful if you want someone who will outgrow their initial training and be an asset to the company long-term.
Open-Ended Questions
Make sure to ask questions that do not have definitive and simple answers. These encourage the participant to go into more detailed responses they are unlikely to have simply learned. These can often use phrases like:
- Describe...
- Share an example of...
- What inspired you to...
- Can you tell me about...
- What does ... mean to you?
Each of these can help you gain deeper insights into a candidate, whether it be their thought process, experiences, or aspirations. It can also allow you to understand their mindset when it comes to what stands out to them in certain scenarios.
Often it can highlight an applicant's strengths or unique qualities, or what they happen to notice about a location. Also, evaluate their response based on the relevance of what they said compared to what you wanted to learn about them. This will help you understand how good they are at sifting through data and parsing for useful information.
If you have already given them a very brief tour of where they will work, you could ask them to describe what the space looks like. Ask them to go into as much detail as possible about everything they saw. This will show you what they notice and prioritize in a space at first glance.
Role-Specific Questions
Naturally, you will have your own set of role-specific questions a candidate must answer. These will allow you to understand whether an individual knows the full extent of the work they are likely to engage in.
When you receive an answer from a candidate related to these, you will be looking for a few key responses:
First, you want to know that the individual understands industry-specific terminology. If they only respond using generic terms or stumble over specifics, they may not have as much experience as they suggest.
In some cases, they may even use nicknames or hyper-specific terms for things that you may need to question them about. If they do, do not dismiss it. This is a sign that they have used them for long enough that they have grown comfortable with the concept in question.
You also want to see if they have practical knowledge about the specific role. Check to see if they can run through a checklist of steps in a unique scenario, for example. This will ensure that they have a firm grasp of role-specific competencies.
Using Many Types of Interview Questions to Find the Perfect Candidate
The above are the most effective types of interview questions you can take with you when leading an interview. They can all help improve the evaluation and hiring process, alongside well-structured interviews. However, you may not always have time to put such recruiter tips in place.
Here at Hire Velocity, we specialize in expert recruitment solutions and can enhance your hiring strategy. Contact our experts to discuss your requirements, and we will craft a specialized hiring process tailored to your company. Work with us today and discover the best people for your business needs.
