Tuesday, March 12, 2024

What To Ask In An Interview As A Candidate

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Do You Have Any Questions For Me

How To Interview Candidates For A Job

This is another classic interview question, and like the one above, you’re seeing how candidates think on their feet. The answer to this question also reveals what’s important to the candidate. Are they wondering about company culture, or compensation? Are they curious about growth potential, or learning opportunities?

A good answer to this question:

There are no right or wrong answers, but personality and communication style are important factors when considering hiring someone to join your team, and you can get a sense of these factors with their answer.

Want more interview tips? Learn about some of the real questions HubSpot’s CMO asks in marketing interviews.

If you happen to be on the other side of the interview table, you can make your resume even more appealing to potential employers by becoming a certified inbound marketing professional with HubSpot’s free . Get started here.

Originally published Aug 20, 2018 11:17:00 PM, updated April 24 2020

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Q3 What Are Your Favourite And Least Favourite Technological Products And Why Do You Like/dislike Them

This tech interview question allows you to assess enthusiasm and knowledge and understand whether prospective workers appreciate your companys hardware, operating system, and software.

Do these candidates seem passionate when discussing the benefits and drawbacks of various tools? Do they value strong engineering, advanced features, a simple user interface, or any other quality of good technology?

This question might answer them all.

Best Interview Questions To Ask Candidates

When you interview a candidate, you have to gather as much information as possible in a short period. Gleaning enough about a candidate to determine whether theyre the best fit for a role is challenging but by asking good interview questions, you will not only get a clearer idea of their skills and experience, but also get a sense for their conversational skills, problem-solving skills, and ability to think quickly. The best way to adequately assess a candidate for both skill fit and culture fit is to ask questions that are specific to the company or role as well as broader questions that give the applicant an opportunity to show their personality and ability to think critically under pressure.

Are you a job seeker? Find Jobs.

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Our Final Question You Should Be Asking In Your Job Interviews

The final question we use time and time again in interviews is Have you already taken Packfinder?

And yes, we are biased. Packfinder is our very own soft-skill assessment that discovers a candidates potential success in various positions. But its the most effective way to ensure a candidate is going to be happy and up for the challenges that will arise in their new position. After all, it asks the most basic questions for you, so you can spend more time asking deeper questions.

Not only does Packfinder ask self-reflective questions that measure a candidates strengths and preferences, but it further asks questions that measure their accuracy in their responses. After all, some candidates feel like they need to respond to questions to please their employer. Packfinder does things a bit differently.

Instead of relying on a standard survey, Packfinder allows candidates to really discover their behavioral tendencies and preferences in the workplace, even unconscious ones. To do so, Packfinder asks a set number of questions, but phrases them in different contexts to examine a candidates consistency and confidence. These are the responses that may surprise you and even the candidate themselves!

Find out more about what Packfinder can offer you with your free Workwolf Business account.

Questions Hiring Managers Can Ask During A Candidate Interview

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When filling their job openings, hiring managers need to conduct a series of interviews to find the most qualified candidate for the role. Throughout an interview, they ask candidates a series of questions that assess each candidate’s experience and qualifications for the role. Prior to an interview, the hiring manager needs to think of smart interview questions that help them learn how a candidate may function in their role. In this article, we share 36 interview questions hiring managers can ask during a candidate interview and provide quality sample answers to a few of them.

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Strategic Interview Questions To Ask Candidates Who Are In A Tie

As some experts pointed out, you should consider these questions more as exercises meant to test the candidates in a rather unconventional manner. Your purpose is to find that applicant who can move your organization forward and support its growth. After all, if you reached this point with your assessments, you are beyond filling open positions. Most likely, you are looking for assets to nurture into future leaders. So lets ask them the strategic questions that matter!

Describe Your Most Significant Conflict At Work And How You Solved It

Conflicts at work are inevitable. Therefore, you want to know how your potential employees not only view conflicts but how they handle them as well. This is one of those questions that detect honesty or dishonesty. It helps you discern who your candidate really is.

But you will need to follow up with questions for each of their answers to deepen your understanding of them. The exhaustive feedback on how they settled issues in the past will help you have a rough idea of how theyâll deal with issues in the future.

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Understand Your Role In The Interview

How to conduct an interview well will always lie in your ability to avoid common hiring mistakes and to assess potential talent in the interview process. But keep in mind that more new hires fail due to personality-culture mismatch than technical skills mismatch. Thats why you need to keep a keen eye out for compatible styles in terms of communication, pace, constructive criticism, and work hour commitments in candidates responses.

When youre figuring out how to interview a candidate, make sure you have a good balance between interviewing and educating. Follow the 80-20 paradigm, so that the candidate speaks for 80% of the time at the beginning of the interview, and you speak for 20% of the time after youve completed your initial round of interview question.

During your education period, always be willing to offer a good amount of career advice and direction. After all, every relationship gives us an opportunity to share our wealth of knowledge and experience with others: If you see the interview as an opportunity to give a gift to someone else whether you hire them or not youll find that the communication becomes a lot more natural and enjoyable.

What’s The Main Concern You Have About This Job

5 interview questions to ask candidates

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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How Do You Deal With Tight Deadlines

For interviewees, their most ideal answer should be a version of this: I review a list of tasks and analyze what are the most urgent and critical matters. I put the most urgent ones on top of the list.

Next, I focus on each task with complete concentration until I finish it before moving on to the next urgent task.

What Fictional Character You Identify With/is Your Role Model And Why

The last entry on our list of tiebreaker strategic interview questions to ask candidates is a strange one. Nonetheless, it will swipe your candidates off their feet. The answer doesnt matter here. You want to see them think fast, put their analytical skills into practice, get creative, and have some fun. It is a lighthearted question inquiring into your candidates self-perception, personality, and even their sense of irony. It also might yield a serious answer and a surprising argumentation, so pay attention!

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What Is Your Ideal Job And Environment What Do You Value In Your Job

As the candidate starts to describe his or her ideal environment, you can start to see if the puzzle pieces fit for your team.

The number one value factor is usually money, but ask what are some other values they have that are important to them in this position. This way, you can see if the candidates values align with you and the rest of the team.

What Do You Like To Do Outside Of Work

Top 10 Phone Interview Questions to Ask Job Candidates ...

This isnt one of the most common interview questions. But, its important to remember that youre hiring an entire person. You want someone who will be able to connect with you and your teamnot a robot who is incapable of forging bonds, sharing interests, and building relationships.

If you feel uncomfortable asking a question like this one in the formal setting of the actual interview, work it into small talk before or after your sit-down. Youll have the opportunity to connect with that candidate on a more personal level, while also getting a more holistic view of what makes her tick.

While the job seeker is on the far more nerve-wracking end of the table, job interviews are enough to inspire some anxiety in you as well. You want to make sure you ask the right questions to really zone in on the best candidate for that open job.

While there are plenty of interviewer tips out there, you want to have some handy prompts in your back pocket that you can use to get the most valuable information out of that short conversation. So, remember these 10 interview questions to ask, and youre that much more likely to find the perfect fit.

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In Five Minutes Could You Explain Something To Me That Is Complicated But You Know Well

This is a much better test of intelligence than a college GPA, and it’s also a great gauge of a candidate’s passion and charisma outside of their core job responsibilities. Candidates who are passionate and knowledgeable about something — and can convey that well — are more likely to be enthusiastic and influential at work.

A good answer to this question:

The “something” in this question doesn’t have to be work-related — it can be a hobby, a sports team, something technical … anything, really. Good responses will tell you how well your candidate comprehends complex subjects and that they can articulate that subject to someone who doesn’t know much about it.

Explanations that use analogies also make good answers, especially if it’s a topic that is filled with industry jargon. This shows that the candidate can solve problems by drawing comparisons to things that are more universally understood.

If You Had A Choice Between Flying And Invisibility Which Superpower Would You Go For And Why

When you are hiring a leader, you wanna be sure they are proactive and always out there. This question is excellent in highlighting that.

Any candidate that prefers invisibility may not be a good suit for executive positions. Why would they want to hide? Instead, go with someone who prefers to fly and explore new ways of doing things.

Special note: many interviewees are super uptight and âbanterlessâ. If you were the one preparing for the interview, you would understand why most candidates get nervous. To lighten the mood and create a friendly environment that will make the candidates free to express themselves, starting with the following questions:

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Q5 Tell Me About A Tech Project Youve Worked On In Your Free Time

It is a wise choice to hire an IT professional who spends their spare time working on side projects.

Why?

These folks are driven and curious, which keeps their skill set fresh and updated. Inquire about how they stay motivated, what they are interested in about the project, and their ultimate goal.

If they can show you a website or app they created, that deserves brownie points.

Why Did You Leave Your Last Position

What Questions To Ask In A Job Interview? â

By asking this question, you will have insight to the future of what the candidate will do in your company as well.

Some reasons are completely understandable and out of the candidates control. However, majority of answers should be put in comparison with your company. They may leave your company for the same reason they state.

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What Is A Pre

Weeding out candidates who arent a good fit for a position can be difficult. So, a pre-interview questionnaire asks employee candidates a series of questions that allow companies to learn more about them prior to the actual in-person interview. It asks them to provide information about their job preferences, career goals, preferred management style, key motivators, and more. This information helps human resource managers decide if the candidate is a good fit for the open position within the organization. Usually, this questionnaire is given only to candidates who are selected for an interview. However, it is sometimes used as a quick first cut assessment tool to screen out a few candidates from the original interview pool.

Why Should We Consider You

You know your company goals. However, you really donât know what value the new employee is going to bring. By asking them why they should be hired, you are giving them a chance to prove that they understand their job. Any employee worth his/her salt will deliver an effective sales pitch that is full of quantifiable figures .

A similar question to this would be, what made you apply for this position? The answers will still show you why they want the job and why they feel they are a good fit.

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The Best Job Interview Questions To Ask Candidates

How lucky are you, and why? How many times heavier than a mouse is an elephant? How many square feet of pizza are consumed in the United States each year?

Hiring managers have heard about using these “curveball” questions to identify the best candidates. Fortunately, for intelligent and qualified candidates everywhere, studies have found that the brainteaser interview questions made famous by Silicon Valley and Wall Street are just as silly as they sound.

But when you’re interviewing people to join your team, you have to get creative. After all, there’s only so much that questions like “What’s your biggest weakness?” and “Are you a team player?” reveal about who your candidates truly are.

To help give you some ideas for the next time you’re meeting with a job candidate, here are some of the best job interview questions to ask, and good answers to each question.

How Would You Bring Value To Our Team

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This question gives candidates the chance to explain specific actions they will take in their role. Hiring managers ask this question to determine if a candidate plans to make positive changes for the company. A quality answer includes examples of what the candidate plans to do in their role. Candidates can share short-term and long-term goals.

Example:“Although this company already has an established social media presence, as the social media manager, my first goal would be making the branding more cohesive. I would make sure both the visuals and copy on all platforms fit the brand’s style guide. Later on, I would work toward creating more interactive media for our accounts. I want to experiment with live video, real-time customer support chat features and a brand ambassador program.”

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Do You Have Any Questions About This Position Or The Company

Simply enough, this question is to encourage them to ask questions. The only red flag is the most common one: that they dont have any questions at all. More often than not, candidates think that having no questions is the same as being easy-going or flexible. But often, when candidates dont ask questions, they have been mass-applying to job postings online. In this case, they may not care at all about this position or this company in particular. They may just be playing their odds. And sometimes that is okaysome candidates want the job after all, regardless of going into their interview blindbut other times, they arent investing the time to dig into a company unless theyre really serious about accepting an offer.

What Are You Currently Working On To Improve Yourself Professionally Or Personally

All candidates know that saying nothing, I am perfect the way I am is the wrong path to take. So, they could offer some fluff answers revolving around some vague skills or personal projects. After all, you cannot verify the validity of such information. If you want to go deep, you should ask them for examples or a concrete demonstration .

The idea here is to keep an eye on people who self-motivate them and aim for self-improvement. Companies need active people who can take any challenge or who can challenge themselves to be better.

From learning a new technical skill to developing beneficial life habits, self-improvement knows no boundaries. A small example of what and how they do might create a long-lasting impression and factor in your hiring decision.

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If I Phoned Your Former Or Current Boss What Would They Say About You

This is one of those questions that can scare an interviewee and get their heart pumping. Nevertheless, when you ask it, it will reveal if they are full of themselves, self-downers, or smooth talkers.

Next, it gives you a clear picture of how they talk about their former boss. Do they still hold grudges or are they full of praises? Now, there is a special note attached to this question. Only ask it if you know you are actually going to make the call.

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