Powerful Questions To Ask Candidates in Job Interviews

In this session I would like to share the idea on how to prepare questions to ask candidates during a job interview. This is actually a very critical step if a recruiter want to have the best chance of separating good candidates from the bad ones. Going in without a thorough preparation only puts you at the mercy of the good answers from candidates. Mind you, good answers does not necessarily equate good candidates. This is among the most common mistakes an inexperienced recruiter usually commit. As a result, the organization has to endure the hiring mistake in terms of low productivity.

Step 1. Study the criteria of selection.
Step 2. Study the performance standards required for each criteria.
Step 3. Prepare questions along the lines of behaviour needed against the standard of performance.

As an example if one of the set criterion is leadership, then you could ask questions along these lines:


  1. How would you rate your leadership skills on the scale of 1 to 10 ?
  2. Can you give examples on how you have led your team through a planning process ?
  3. Please give instances on how you have coached a staff with poor performance ?
  4. What were the leadership mistakes have you made ? How did you recover from the mistakes ? What did you learn from there ? (This is a good question because everybody makes mistakes. The most important thing we want to learn about the candidate is how they recover from them).
  5. Do you have a method of delegation ? If so explain how you would decide and what to delegate ?
Once you have asked the questions above, you can then proceed to ask the performance part like ...thank you for explaining to us how you coached a poorly performing staff. Tell us about the result of your coaching. And this can be asked at the end of the responses to each of the questions above. It will make you focussed  on the behaviour needed to produce the task and the outcome of the behaviour (performance). 

The model questionss can be replicated for other criteria like team work, innovation, decision making etc.

In my experience, even the candidates enjoyed answering the questions because the then can probe deeper into their own past performance. 

Happy trying.

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