What Good Interview Questions To Ask

The Biggest Question Of All In An Interview

When the interview is over and all the other questions have been asked , its time to ask yourself the biggest question of all, Do I want to work for this company?

Only you can answer that question, but if you know the best questions to ask an employer in an interview then youll be able to get all the information you need to make the right decision.

In Past Performance Reviews What Are Some Areas Your Manager Felt You Could Improve On

This is a great way to measure the quality of the candidate based on a previous manager. In performance reviews, managers provide genuine constructive criticism on how the employee can improve. When the candidate shares those constructive criticisms with you, you will be aware of some areas of improvements.

Additionally, a great candidate will discuss the resulting improvement plans and how they accomplished those improvements.

How Did You Learn About The Opening

Job boards, general postings, online listings, job fairs — most people find their first few jobs that way, so that’s certainly not a red flag.

But a candidate who continues to find each successive job from general postings probably hasn’t figured out what he or she wants to do — and where he or she would like to do it.

He or she is just looking for a job often, any job.

So don’t just explain how you heard about the opening. Show that you heard about the job through a colleague, a current employer, by following the company–show that you know about the job because you want to work there.

Employers don’t want to hire people who just want a job they want to hire people who want a job with their company.

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What Are The Traits Of Your Ideal Manager Or Boss

This is a great question to ask any up-and-coming employee because it shows how good of a fit they would be in the company. If youre the hiring manager or someone whos going to be their future boss, their answer can spell out your future boss-employee relationship.

This question also shows how much guidance a potential employee might want. If their ideal manager is someone who gives detailed instructions and keeps constant watch over the team, they might need a lot of guidance. If their ideal manager is someone who is laid back and hands off, they might not be a good fit if your company culture is more high stress and deadline oriented.

Relating: A great boss, to me, is someone who is clear in their direction and asks a lot of questions from their employeesjust like youve been doing. I believe my ideal boss is someone who takes their employees opinions into account, although we might have disagreements, and thats OK and expected at times. Oh, and a great sense of humor certainly helps!

Unrealistic: My ideal boss is someone who doesnt back down. Theyre always courageous and willing to lead. They never take no for an answer. And they do things the right way 100% of the time.

What’s The Biggest Decision You’ve Made Over The Past Year Why Was It Such A Big Deal

This shouldn’t be seen as a way of delving into a candidate’s personal life, you don’t want to find out why they’ve just broken up with their partner!

Instead, interview questions like this are designed to show you how the candidate approaches the decision making process. Do they make choices impulsively or do they conduct painstaking research. Did they make a plan, or did they talk it through with friends?

The answers to this question will if they’re style of decision-making and their thought process fits the way you do things at your company.

Determining if a candidate has the relevant skills and experience is only half the battle. You need to make sure that they’re a good cultural fit for your company if you want to make good hiring decisions. Here are a few questions that can help you find this out:

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Work Experience Questions To Ask Job Candidates:

• What types of jobs have you held in the past?
• What was your title at your current/previous/last job?
• What were your duties in that position?
• What did you like most/least about the position?
• Why are you leaving your present employer?
• Whats the most important thing you learned in school and/or at your last job?
• Why did you choose your major?
• If selected for this position, can you describe your strategy for the first 90 days?
• What is your understanding of the skills necessary to perform this job?
• What special training have you completed that qualifies you for this job?
• What certifications do you hold?
• Can you describe how to _____________ ?
• This job requires the ability to _____________ . Can you give me an example of a time that you have had to _____________ ?

What Challenges Did My Predecessor Face

This question can be scary, but beneficial the answer is vital. Straight, direct, and positive with an explanation is a good sign, while hesitation is a red flag. This is about you assessing the company as much as it is about the interviewer assessing you smart interviewees want to know the challenges of the job.

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A Snail Is At The Bottom Of A 30

Questions like these have become a lot more popular in recent years. The interviewer isn’t necessarily looking for the right answer but instead a little insight into your reasoning abilities.

All you can do is talk through your logic as you try to solve the problem. Don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself if you get it wrong — sometimes the interviewer is merely trying to assess how you deal with failure.

Unique Interview Questions To Shake Up Your Hiring

Are you asking unique interview questions?

Or, just the same old, everyday, run-of-the-mill ones?

Unique interview questions are designed to probe beneath the surface to get you the valuable knowledge you require to make the best hiring decisions.

In this article, youll learn what the most common interview questions are, why you should ask unique questions, the uncommon questions you should be asking candidates, and so much more!

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Top Questions To Ask An Interviewee

When conducting interviews to fill critical job vacancies its important to ask the right questions of the interviewee and reveal the best answers ensuring a more informed hiring decision.

These 25 interview questions for interviewees will help the interviewer get to know a candidate better before making a decision to bring them aboard their company.

What’s The Main Concern You Have About This Job

Every candidate will have at least one reservation about the role, so press candidates who insist that they’re 100% happy with the job description. They might have an issue with the commute, the size of the company, or having to relocate.

If possible, ease those concerns. Perhaps you offer flexible working hours, in-depth training or thorough onboarding.

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Can You Tell Me About A Time When Things Didnt Go The Way You Wanted At Work Such As A Project That Failed Or Being Passed Over For A Promotion

Everyone deals with professional setbacks at some point in their career. What you want to know is how people handled and what they learned from those situations. The best employees are resilient, using setbacks as a springboard toward positive changes. So listen to not only the problem they mention, but also what they did after the disappointment.

Questions About The Position

1. How will you measure the success of the person in this position?

This gets right to the crux of what you need to know about the job: What does it mean to do well, and what will you need to achieve in order for the manager to be happy with your performance?

You might figure that the job description already laid this out, but its not uncommon for a job description to be the same one an employer has been using for the last ten years, even if the job changed significantly during that time. Companies often post job descriptions that primarily use boilerplate language from HR, while the actual manager has very different ideas about whats most important in the role. Also, frankly, most employers just suck at writing job descriptions , so its useful to have a conversation about what the role is really about. You might find out that while the job posting listed 12 different responsibilities, your success in fact just hinges on 2 of them, or that the posting dramatically understated the importance of 1 of them, or that the hiring manager is battling with her own boss about expectations for the role, or even that the manager has no idea what success would look like in the job .

2. What are some of the challenges you expect the person in this position to face?

3. Can you describe a typical day or week in the job?

4. How long did the previous person in the role hold the position? What has turnover in the role generally been like?

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Questions You Can Ask

What type of work will you be doing?

• Can you tell me more about the day-to-day duties and responsibilities of this position?
• What would a day in the life of a _____ with your organisation look like?
• What challenges will I have in this job?

What training and progression opportunities are there?

• What kind of induction or training programme will I complete when I begin the job?
• Will there be opportunities for increased responsibility?
• Is there a regular performance review? How is this organised?

What are the people like?

• Can you tell me about the team I will be working with?
• How big is the team I will work with?
• Does the team work closely with other teams?

Whats the organisation like?

• What is the culture of the organisation like?
• What are the biggest challenges and opportunities the organisation is facing right now?
• Where do you see the organisation headed in the next few years?

Whats One Fact Thats Not On Your Linkedin Profile

Heres another open-ended question to ask an interviewee that can help you uncover some interesting insights. Similar to asking, What do you think I need to know that we havent discussed? it could spark some conversation about a hobby outside of their 9-to-5 life or even a compelling story that reveals more of their strengths and motivations. This question can help you understand not just what a job candidate has done, but why.

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What Was The Color Of The Receptionists Shirt

As simple as this question may seem, over 60% of candidates fail this question. The main aim of the question is to test a candidates attention to detail. In the nervousness leading to an interview, candidates tend to be surprisingly oblivious to their surroundings.

As any Candidate selected by my firm would very likely handle delicate engineering apparatuses, it is pertinent that they are able to pay attention to minute details.

Where Do You See The Company In Five Years 10

This question is important because not only will it give you a sense of how stable your job might be, but the job you take today should always be in line with your long term career goals. The last thing you want to do is take a job that wont benefit you in the long run or help advance you towards the next step on your career path. Finding out early on where the company is headed in the long term can help you plan your own trajectory.

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Questions About Next Steps

10. Whats your timeline for next steps?

This is a basic logistics question, but its useful to ask because it gives you a benchmark for when you can expect to hear something back. Otherwise, in a few days youre likely to start agonizing about whether you should have heard back about the job by now and what it means that you havent, and obsessively checking your phone to see if the employer has tried to make contact. Its much better for your quality of life if you know that youre not likely to hear anything for two weeks or four weeks or that the hiring manager is leaving the country for a month and nothing will happen until shes back, or whatever the case might be.

Plus, asking this question makes it easy for you to check in with the employer if the timeline they give you comes and goes with no word. If they tell you that they plan to make a decision in two weeks and its been three weeks, you can reasonably email them and say something like, I know you were hoping to make a decision around this time, so I wanted to check in and see if you have an updated timeline you can share. Im really interested in the position and would love to talk more with you.

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Order Alison Greens book Ask a Manager: Clueless Colleagues, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work here. Got a question for her? Email . Her advice column appears here every Tuesday.

Who Would I Be Reporting To Are Those Three People On The Same Team Or On Different Teams

It’s important to ask about the pecking order of a company in case you have several bosses, Vicky Oliver writes in her book “301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions.”

If you’re going to be working for several people, you need to know “the lay of the internal land,” she says or if you’re going to be over several people, you probably would want to get to know them before accepting the position.

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What Are You Trying To Avoid In Your Next Job

The answer can be surprisingly revealing to what upsets the candidate in his or her job. Additionally, how well does he or she manage difficult situations.

A great candidate will respond by listing a few concerns while at the same time providing you examples of how they professionally deal with them.

What Was Your Salary In Your Last Job

This is a tough one. You want to be open and honest, but frankly, some companies ask the question as the opening move in salary negotiations.

Try an approach recommended by Liz Ryan. When asked, say, “I’m focusing on jobs in the $50K range. Is this position in that range?”

Maybe the interviewer will answer maybe she won’t. If she presses you for an answer, you’ll have to decide whether you want to share or demur. Ultimately your answer won’t matter too much, because you’ll either accept the salary offered or you won’t, depending on what you think is fair.

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Describe Your Dream Job

Three words describe how you should answer this question: relevance, relevance, relevance.

But that doesn’t mean you have to make up an answer. You can learn something from every job. You can develop skills in every job. Work backward: Identify things about the job you’re interviewing for that will help you if you do land your dream job someday, and then describe how those things apply to what you hope to someday do.

And don’t be afraid to admit that you might someday move on, whether to join another company or — better — to start your own business. Employers no longer expect “forever” employees.

What Really Drives Results In This Job

Employees are investments, and you expect every employee to generate a positive return on his or her salary.

In every job some activities make a bigger difference than others. You need your HR team to fill job openings, but what you really want is for them to find the right candidates, because that results in higher retention rates, lower training costs, and better overall productivity.

You need your service techs to perform effective repairs, but what you really want is for those techs to identify ways to solve problems and provide other benefits — in short, to build customer relationships and even generate additional sales.

Great candidates want to know what truly makes a difference and drives results, because they know helping the company succeed means they will succeed as well.

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Tell Me About A Time You Failed

This question is very similar to the one about making a mistake, and you should approach your answer in much the same way. Make sure you pick a real, actual failure you can speak honestly about. Start by making it clear to the interviewer how you define failure. For instance: As a manager, I consider it a failure whenever Im caught by surprise. I strive to know whats going on with my team and their work. Then situate your story in relation to that definition and explain what happened. Finally, dont forget to share what you learned. Its OK to faileveryone does sometimesbut its important to show that you took something from the experience.

How Would You Describe Your Own Working Style

While you dont want to build a completely homogenous team, you do need to make sure that new additions are able to work in a way that doesnt throw a major wrench into the way things already operate.

For that reason, its important that you ask each candidate about her working style. Does she take a really collaborative approach or would she rather work independently? Does she perform well with a lot of direction or is she more of a self starter?

This insight into how each applicant prefers to handle his or her work will be invaluable in determining not only the right match for that jobbut for the entire team.

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