5 Interview Questions You
Should Ask To Get Quality Candidates
When you’re interviewing hundreds of prospective hires, it can be
difficult to vet for quality. Asking these five questions can help.
When your company is growing and growing
fast, you don’t always get as much time as you’d like to find and vet
prospective hires. Instead of a warm and unhurried half-hour conversation,
sometimes you’ll need to find out if a candidate’s a good fit with five
interview questions or less.
Does that mean that when you’re hiring
hundreds, you’re stuck with the first 150 candidates who apply and show up on
time? Absolutely not. It just means you need to be as strategic as possible
with the questions you ask.
Here are five interview questions that will
help you sort and file candidates in a short amount of time.
INTERVIEW QUESTION NO. 1: WHAT’S YOUR AVAILABILITY FOR
THIS JOB?
Why it works.
Whether you’re hiring part-time retail
associates or full-time marketing managers, this mundane yet practical question
should be the first on your list–because if the answer doesn’t align with your
needs, the conversation can end there. When you’re hiring hundreds, asking this
question first will allow you to devote more of your time to candidates who are
most likely to move forward in the process.
What to look for.
The candidate’s expectations for hours,
location, and availability should be in line with what your company is
offering. Guide the conversation to the candidate’s preferences for onsite
versus remote work, expected hours per day, and yearly vacation and benefits to
get a sense of what is negotiable and what is not. If your expectations aren’t
aligned, wish them well and move on to the next interview.
INTERVIEW QUESTION NO. 2: WHAT ATTRACTS YOU MOST ABOUT
THIS POSITION?
Why it works.
You want to hear why the candidate wants the
job in their own words so that you can assess how well they understand the role
and align with the position. Asking a candidate to tell you what attracts them
to the job will allow you to compare their expectations to reality and see if
there’s a match.
What to look for.
What attracts the candidate to the job should
be in line with your vision for the job. If not, it’s likely the prospective
hire will get frustrated or bored with the position and decide to move on in the future. For
example, if you’re building a large writing team, you’d want each candidate to
focus on a love of brainstorming, researching, and writing content. If a
candidate instead focuses on the single line in the job description about
big-picture editorial planning, you might not have found the best fit for a
writing position.
INTERVIEW QUESTION NO. 3: WHAT WAS THE BEST THING ABOUT
YOUR LAST JOB?
Why it works.
Answering this question requires candidates
to assign value to an experience they had in their last job. What they choose
can tell you a lot about who they are as a person and what kind of new job is
going to make them happy. It will also allow you to assess whether or not this
job is likely to have any of those attributes in common.
What to look for.
You’re not looking for candidates who loved
their last job only because of the gym discount or unlimited beer on tap. You
are looking for candidates who loved something about their last job that they
can also love about the new job–similar tasks and goals, overlapping client or
industry base, a comparable team dynamic, etc.
INTERVIEW QUESTION NO. 4: WHAT WAS THE WORST THING ABOUT
YOUR FORMER JOB?
Why it works.
While a version of this question is
common in most interview settings, it’s especially important to ask when you’re
hiring at scale, because it gives you an opportunity to assess each candidate’s
communication skills and level of self-awareness. Candidates will have the
chance to trash their former employers or take the high road, and which option
they choose will reveal a lot about how they will approach their work at your
company.
What to look for.
Even if a candidate is coming from the worst
job in the world, a prospective hire with poise and a positive attitude will be
able to answer this question in a productive way and highlight either their
understanding of complex problems within the industry or their ability to
overcome challenges. Candidates without those skills will take the opportunity
to throw their employer, coworkers, or customers under the bus, and you’re
better off knowing that before you hire them.
INTERVIEW QUESTION NO. 5: HOW WOULD YOU SOLVE THIS
PROBLEM?
Why it works.
It’s not always realistic to thoroughly test
a candidate’s technical skills or arrange for a paid trial project. But what
you can do is use the last few minutes of an interview to see how a candidate
approaches a common problem they might experience on the job. Whether they
answer the question correctly or not, you’ll still gain insight into how they
communicate and solve problems.
What to look for.
Whether you’re asking a highly technical
engineer to solve a math equation, or a healthcare administrative assistant to
troubleshoot a complicated scheduling issue, you’re looking for a logical
thought process, a positive attitude and, in some cases, a willingness to admit
defeat or failure. Except in circumstances where absolute accuracy is
important, the most critical thing you’ll learn from the candidate’s answer to
this question is how they approach problems.
Listing a single open position can bring in a flock of candidates, and that formula is compounded
when you have hundreds of openings at once. When you need to quickly and easily
weed out undesirable candidates and identify quality candidates, you can count
on these five sure-fire questions.
BY SARAH GREESONBACH
https://www.fastcompany.com/40526761/5-interview-questions-you-should-ask-to-get-quality-candidates?utm_source=postup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fast%20Company%20Daily&position=9&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=02072018
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