5 Questions You Need to Ask Every Candidate in an Interview
Building a high-performance team?
We think the formula for hiring top talent is straightforward – if you hire great people you must keep them engaged with interesting and challenging work. Oh…and you need to be a great leader too. The rest will take care of itself.
The challenge is twofold and neither one of those things are easy to do. Hiring people is hard, and so is keeping them motivated. Well, this month I will try to help, at least with the hiring part.
Here are the five questions we think a hiring authority should ask every candidate. This will help you determine and make great hiring decisions.
1. Tell me about your top accomplishment. Provide me with a specific example and one that can be measured or had results.
This question is a great insight question designed to get to know whether the candidate has demonstrated big things where they have worked. If they fail to provide specifics such as the people on the team, the details of the accomplishment and all you hear is “me: '' or “I” and it’s all about them, you may want to consider whether having that type of leader on your team is worth the risk.
2. Tell me your best customer success story?
This question provides the ability to view the candidate’s recall and detail including their level of engagement when talking about their interactions with the consumer. You can expand it to see if they know the difference between internal and external customers. We believe that nearly every role including non customer facing positions need to have an understanding of who their customers are and how to engage them.
3. What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in the workplace and how did you overcome it? What did you learn from it?
You can learn alot about a candidate’s ability to learn and their humility because almost everyone has a story about struggling in a project or a task. This question helps you understand how they react to adversity.
4. As the (fill in a title for the role) what are 3 areas or KPI’s you would monitor and focus on a daily basis to hit the goal?
This question will tell you how much they know about their core competencies…for example as a Sales Manager retail is it the daily sales goal, closing rate and gross margin they are reviewing and protecting?
5. How often and in what forms do you communicate with your teams to set goals and review performance?
Whether a controller, production manager, sales manager, or GM…this answer will tell you how often they communicate to lead their functional area. Do they have startup meetings daily to communicate the day's goals or do they wait and only meet weekly? Some of the most successful organizations suggest that daily goal setting is critical, especially in retail and production area settings.
Remember, hiring is never easy and we have all been fooled. Anyone that has never made a hiring mistake just has not done significant hiring.
The biggest key to great interviewing is asking clear questions, clarifying for understanding, and really listening to the answers. From my years of experience, you should have the candidate do 70% of the talking.
As a bonus, you can download some other quick tips below including what to ask and what should never be asked.
Want more interview tips?
Interview Questions you SHOULD Ask
Interview Questions you SHOULDN’T Ask
Bill O’Malley is President of Connector Team Recruiting a firm headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia specializing in the Furniture | Appliance and Sleep verticals. Connector Team is a full-service Search Firm offering permanent placement recruiting and interim staffing solutions.
Feel free to contact Bill at bill@connectorteamrecruiting.com.
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