Are You Asking These 10 Essential Interview Questions to Find the Right Candidate?

Talent acquisition managers, you need to be very creative yet analytical to assess enthusiastic candidates. Here are the top 10 interview questions that you can use to find the right candidates for the job roles in your organization.

Best Interview Questions to Ask the Candidate at the Time of Recruitment

1. What One Skill Makes You the Most Qualified for This Position?
Asking this interview question helps you learn about the core competency skills of new hires. For example, if a candidate has knowledge of CAD but you are hiring for a front office role, this skill is irrelevant and may be a red flag.

2. What Professional Achievement Are You Most Proud of?
By asking this interview question, you can determine whether potential new hires have worked on significant projects in their current or previous organizations and what their success milestones are so far.

3. Tell Me About a Time When You Overcame a Challenge.
You should ask this interview question when hiring a candidate. It allows you to understand how potential new hires would react to challenges in the company and whether they will resist any changes in the environment.

4. How Would You Describe Your Working Style?
Asking this interview question provides insight into the candidate's approach when recruiting new hires. You can determine if they are methodical or not.

5. What Three Words Would You Use to Describe Your Ideal Work Environment?
Ask this interview question to understand how new hires describe themselves.

6. If Hired, What Is the First Thing You Would Tackle in This Position?
This question helps you determine if new hires will bring positive change to the company. All you need to do is tactfully ask this interview question!

7. Why Are You Leaving Your Current Employer? / Why Did You Leave Your Previous Workplace?
This question helps you understand what led to employee dissatisfaction in the previous job and what new hires expect from your company.

8. What One Skill Would You Like to Improve?
This interview question reveals whether your new hires are aware of their weaknesses.

9. What Excites You Most About This Position?
This question helps you understand what motivated the candidate to apply for this vacancy. You may also learn if new hires are looking forward to gaining new skills.

10. Describe Your Favorite Supervisor and Your Least-Favorite Supervisor — and Why.
Asking this interview question provides insights into team dynamics and helps determine which type of supervisor to assign to the candidate during the recruitment stage.

To sum up, ask these top 10 interview questions to your potential new hires during recruitment and start hiring a candidate for your company. Happy employee hunting to you!

If Hired, What Is the First Thing You Would Tackle in This Position?

Potential candidates have no hope of answering this question if they have not been given:

(a) A comprehensive job description of the duties required

(b) An explanation of the goals and objectives of the organization

(c) An explanation of what challenges the organization faces

Most people have no hope of answering until 9 am on the first morning, sitting in the chair and looking at what needs to be done.

For me, my answer would be finding the most optimal route and transport method from my home to your office to get to work on time every day.

Tell me about a time when you overcame a challenge?

This, like most other questions, needs to be asked as a STAR question, i.e., in four parts: Situation, Task, Action, Result. You need to know what the situation was, what the candidate needed to do, the action the candidate took, and what the result was.

The Importance of Relevant Interview Questions

In my many years here on CiteHR, I have noticed that Indian interviewers often ask too many irrelevant questions. Your sole objective should be to determine if the potential candidate possesses the skills you need, can perform the job required, and will be a good cultural fit for the organization. This can be achieved through targeted performance-based interviewing and by asking shortlisted candidates the same set of questions so everyone can be scored on the same basis.

Common Recruitment Challenges

The reasons why people face difficulties with recruitment and end up selecting the wrong candidates are simple:

1. No planning
2. No position description for the vacancy
3. No person description for the vacancy
4. No standardized set of questions for the interview
5. Failure to use performance-based interviewing, i.e., STAR questions
6. No proper shortlisting of candidates to produce the top 5 or 6 people to interview
7. Using agencies to provide candidates, most of whom end up being unsuitable

None of this is rocket science. I have proven time and time again that this approach works.

Understanding Your Goals and Perspectives

1. What is your aim in life?
2. How do you view "working"?
3. How would you balance your personal life and work?
4. What would constitute a crisis situation at work for you?
5. What keeps you happy at work?
6. What makes you unhappy with your work?
7. How would you make yourself most productive?
8. What would be the most suitable role for you in management?
9. If you were an employer right now, how much would you offer a candidate like yourself?
10. What do you want to achieve from your work?

These questions focus on understanding your goals, perspectives on work, work-life balance, crisis management, job satisfaction, productivity, preferred role in management, self-assessment of worth as an employer, and desired outcomes from work.

Evaluating Interview Questions

Where are the questions to ascertain the skills and experience of the candidate for the job they are being interviewed for? If you asked me those sorts of questions in an interview, I would just walk out, as I would have judged you as an employer I did not want to work for.

Almost none of it is relevant. The crisis question needs to be rephrased as a STAR question, and the question on work/life balance needs to be asked differently. The question on a management role is pointless; the person in front of you is being interviewed for a specific role. Is someone really going to tell you that the role they want is different? I don't think so. I'm guessing this is a trick question to get the candidate to reveal other intentions.