Interview Insights: What Key Questions Help HR Assess Candidate Attitude and Stability?

Dear All,

What questions should HR ask to assess the candidates' attitude and stability during an interview?

Thanks & Regards,
Pooja

For approximate good results, you can take an online psychometric test. These results will be quite accurate.

Dear Pooja,

Assessing Candidate Stability During Interviews

Judging a candidate's stability is one of the most unpredictable attributes during an interview. However, with experience, I would like to share my way of assessing candidates on this.

Always look for "what motivates the candidate in changing jobs in a career?"

For instance:
- Dec 2004 - Feb 2006: XYZ Ltd
- Mar 2006 - April 2008: PQR Ltd
- May 2008 - till Date: OMR Ltd.

We always show our interest in this sequence: why did you leave OMR, and now why are you leaving XYZ? This actually breaks the prepared answer of any potential candidate as they cannot give the same excuse twice. Based on their answer, we look for their interest in the following: Money Driven, Designation Driven, Location Constraint, or what.

Match these with your requirements, and take a gut feeling decision on the person's commitment to stay.

Also, do inquire thoroughly about the person's family background. It often gives a clear indication of what might pull them to withdraw from the job, or how important the next promotion or current salary is for them.

If you are hiring outstation candidates, do inquire about the frequency of visits to their hometown and also the dependents at home. Be extra careful with females or the elder child of the family.

Sometimes we make the person calculate their career growth. This has given us great results in terms of stability. We make them calculate with us, their growth meter in terms of successive months ahead.

This acts as an eye-opener to them, and they tend to be more professional.

Hope you can get in the rhythm of the above said.

Regards,

Ankita Puri

Dear Pooja,

Always include a stress interview as part of the interview process so that you can gain a better understanding of the candidate's true personality.

Regards,

Akshay
Hindustan Motors

Why Explore So Deep

1) Look for the skills match.

2) Decide what the candidate will stay here and do rather than asking him/her if selected, "How long will you stay?"

3) Most HRs fail to realize, "We will provide you a conducive environment to stay on." That should be the way to look at it. Rather than assessing the stability of the candidate, the stability of the organization is more important. Many HRs fail to realize this. This is my experience from the interviews.

The folly in the mentioned process: "What if the candidate holds project portfolios always, and he has no home to go?" He has to change tracks. Please look at it from this angle.

Regards,
Milind Mulgund

Parameters to Judge a Candidate

According to me, we can judge a candidate based on these parameters:

1. Positive attitude/behavior
2. Adaptability
3. Willingness to work in teams
4. Learning to learn from mistakes
5. Proactive
6. Handling stress and criticism
7. Energy, enthusiasm, and interest to work in that particular field

With Regards,
Phanindra

Candidate Evaluation Techniques

I feel the following elements need to be identified. The points mentioned are non-traditional, and I believe they will help you judge the candidates more thoroughly on a vertical level:

A. Discuss a domain-level case study with them. The purpose of this discussion is to encourage a broader thinking process and to evaluate their solutions.

B. Present them with decision-based puzzles or quizzes, etc. The purpose is to assess their problem-solving abilities.

Pooja, you can also include some "honey trap" questions to evaluate their stability.

Regards,
Simmy Saini | Google India.

Hi Simmy,

Thank you for your suggestion. Could you please provide me with an example of this type of interview, or suggest a website through which I can better understand it?

Thanks & Regards,
Pooja