What To Ask When Conducting An Interview

Do You Have Any Questions For Me

This question typically wraps up the interview. Most candidates who are interested in the job will be prepared with a few relevant questions for a hiring manager. However, if the discussion was long and detailed, the candidate may have already asked their questions. In a case like this, its OK if a candidate doesnt have a list of questions at the end of the interview.

Create A Great Job Description

Create a job description listing the essential skills and experience.

If you want to hire the perfect person for a position, you need to have a really good description of the position. Don’t get caught up with lots of bullet points, like “Office Experience,” and “Computer Skills.”

A good description shouldn’t over-describe. It should focus on what is absolutely necessary for someone to be successful in the position, and describe what success looks like over specific periods of time typically 30, 90, 180 days, and 1 year.

Use the job description as a roadmap for creating questions.

For example, if you’ve determined that customer service skills are essential, you’ll want to create questions related directly to that. How do they define customer service? What is the best customer service experience they’ve ever had? Review all your essentials in the description and build questions directly related to them.

Write out your questions beforehand.

You might think you can remember all of your interview questions, but the reality is that the greatest weakness of most interviewers is exposed when they try flying blind. Write down your questions, and be sure to give yourself enough blank space to jot down notes.

Jot down notes during the interview.

Get specific details and come back to them.

Make sure you’re on the same page with salary expectations.

Ask detailed questions about roles that lasted less than two years.

Screen All Candidates With Pre

The easiest way to have great job interviews is to have great candidates sitting in front of you. But its tough to identify the best candidates from their resumes alone. And you’ll spend a lot of time reviewing resumes if you don’t take a more efficient approach.

Especially if you have a high volume of job applications, which makes it hard to give each resume the attention it deserves. An eye-tracking study showed recruiters spend only 7 seconds on average skimming a resume. But thats not a winning strategy for identifying the best candidates.

Even if you did have all the time in the world to read every resume from front to back, a resume doesnt tell the full story. People can embellish their skills or even outright lie on a resume. Pre-employment assessments help solve that problem, giving you a more efficient alternative to resume evaluation.

A pre-employment assessment is a collection of tests given to a candidate as part of the application. You can test candidates on:

• Programming skills
• Software skills

By delivering these assessments to each candidate, you will reduce bias in your hiring process by giving you a view of each candidate that doesnt depend on a recruiter scanning thousands of resumes. That’s because resumes include identifying information that can trigger unconscious bias.

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How To Prepare For Interviews

1. Review the job descriptionThe job description typically provides the criteria that can be used to hire candidates. Consider reviewing the requirements of the position and determining if it accurately reflects the qualifications, skills and other abilities that match the needs of the company. Additionally, this helps you to understand exactly what you need and the criteria that best suits the decision making process when choosing the right candidate.

2. Review candidates resumeDont just glance at a resume for a split second or minutes before an interview. How will you know or understand a candidates qualifications, skills or credentials within this short time? How will you be able to ask intelligent questions concerning the candidates accomplishments? How will you create rapport, a friendly environment or a compelling conversation when you dont know much about the person in advance?

Plan and come up with a checklist to sell your company and the position youre hoping to fill. Include points such as:

• How does your company ensure it achieves its goals or mission.
• How does your company ensures employees are happy, motivated, and grow and develop in their profession.
• Challenges employees face in the role and how the company supports the employees, e.g. training or mentoring.

Benefit #: Prevent Legal Issues

Exit interviews are also important because they provide an opportunity to arrange all legal issues before an employee leaves a company.

By reminding employees about their obligations with the company, such as a covenant not to compete, invention and patent policies and maintaining trade secrets, an employer can minimize the likelihood of potential legal problems and lawsuits.

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Confirming The Interview Time

Confirm the time of the interview. Nothing makes a poor impression like showing up an hour after your scheduled interview because you had the time wrong.

Example:

Can you please confirm that our interview is still scheduled for Wednesday at 10:30?

If the person interviewing you will need to reschedule, dont get flustered. Simply ask when is a good time to reschedule.

Example:

Im sorry to hear that day and time no longer work for you. Can we reschedule for the following day at the same time?

I understand you need to reschedule. Can you let me know another day and time that work for you?

Be Prepared For Candidates Interview Questions

Consider the fact that great interviews should be a two-way street. Therefore, encourage candidates to ask as many questions as they possibly can about the company, the role or the duties and responsibilities that come with the job position. Note that an excellent candidate is one who takes this opportunity to ask intelligent questions about the company culture, current or future projects and the expectations of working in the company. Additionally, candidates who ask questions demonstrate interest and enthusiasm for joining your company as well as the fact that they have done their homework.

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How To Use Open Questions: 9 Examples

There are two broad approaches to questioning in counseling: open-ended and closed questions.

Closed-ended questions are less broad and are used to get very specific information from your patients, for example, medical information or living arrangements .

Open-ended questions are more unstructured and are meant to give you more information about unique events and, when used strategically, can be formatted to gain specific insight about various parts of the patients life .

Specific ways that open-ended questions can be used in counseling sessions depend on what information you want from your patients. This section provides a general overview of how you can convert simple questions into open-ended questions to help get your patients to open up :

Questions during the counseling session are meant to provide new areas for discussion and provide clarity for you when learning about the reason your patients sought counseling.

What Attracted You To Apply For This Position

By asking this question you, as the interviewer, should be able to gauge if job seeker has an enthusiasm for the job opening or if they just applied blindly to the position.

You could also review the experience in their resume with the job opening and ask them how they would react to specific situations.

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Asking For The Interview Venue

Here are some questions to ask when confirming an interview. Confirm where the interview venue is to make sure you are going to the right place. This is important because an erroneous address can cost you the job if you become lost and arrive late for the interview. Repeat the address after you receive it to ensure accuracy.

Example:

Id like to confirm the address our interview is being held at. Can you please verify the address and room number?

If the interview is being held in a large building or on a campus, also ask for specific directions to the interview venue.

Example:

You mentioned the interview is taking place in conference room one. Whats the easiest way to get there from the entrance of the building?

Counseling Interview Questions To Ask Your Therapy Clients

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• 19-11-2021

Empowering your patients and guiding them to realize their inner strengths to deal with lifes difficulties are some of the central goals of counseling.

Knowing which questions to ask patients at different points of the counseling process is vital, as your patients will be more inclined to reflect on their difficulties. Ultimately, this will ease distress and promote long-lasting change .

This article will provide specific outlines of how you can structure your counseling interview, with questions you can use in different stages of the process.

The aim of these resources is to help you develop a meaningful connection with your patients as they embark on a counseling journey toward self-understanding and meaningful change.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to . These science-based exercises will provide you with detailed insight into positive Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and give you the tools to apply it in your therapy or coaching.

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Conduct A Phone Screen Or A One

Its wise to conduct a screening phone call in advance to filter out any unqualified candidates that made it past the pre-screening phase. You can ask candidates deal-breaker questions about the role and verify facts on their resumes to assess whether theyre deserving of a full interview.

As an alternative, many companies also use video screening questions as a replacement or in addition to a screening call.

What Questions To Ask When Conducting An Interview

This might be the hardest part of the whole interview. Asking the right questions can tell you a lot about the candidate and you can make a well thought-out decision. Job interviews usually consist of the following questions:

• Tell me more about yourself.
• How did you hear about the job?
• What do you know about the company?
• Have you worked on this or similar position?
• Why did you leave your last job?
• How did you contribute to your team?
• How did you resolve the last conflict you had with a client?
• How did you resolve the last conflict you had with a colleague?
• Do you have any questions?
• What salary do you expect?

But its also very hard to prepare questions, that will be appropriate for every single interview. Its easy to give you a template of questions but theres a lot more about an interview than that. We want to give you real advice, which you can apply for every job position, in every company. So here are guidelines which you can use to come up with the right questions for you and your candidate.

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Whats The Most Interesting Project Youve Worked On In A Past Position

Ask this interview question to determine if the applicant would likely enjoy the work available at your company. Do the types of tasks they find fulfilling align with the job description for your position? Making sure employees find their work professionally satisfying is one of the most important factors in retention.

Growth Potential Behavioralinterview Questions

1. Describe a situation when your superior was not around and a problem developed. How did you handle the problem? What were the results?

2. Tell me when the last occasion you asked for direct feedback from your manager and why?

3. Is there something that would motivate you to move from your current position?

4. What is a big career goal that you achieved recently?

5. Was there a time you were passed over for promotion? Was it fair?

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What Are Your Greatest Strengths To A Company

The ability of a candidate to talk about their strengths and still maintain their humility is a strong indicator of a winning personality.

This also gives the interviewee a chance to explain and align their strengths with the position they are interviewing for demonstrating attributes that will contribute to the companys goals.

A Cliche Interview Questions

You might have noticed that many of the common questions to ask in an interview are missing. These are questions were all familiar with such as Whats your greatest weakness? or Why should we hire you? The biggest problem with these questions is that theyre some of the most asked interview questions and candidates likely have prepared their answers ahead of time. There is plenty of content online for candidates instructing them how to answer these questions, meaning you may not get a truthful answer at all.

Plus, you cant be sure what exactly the answers to these questions indicate. Granted, if someone says I dont have any weaknesses or offers the covert brag of Im too hard-working, youll know they may not have the attitude youre looking for. But, most candidates will likely take the middle road naming a weakness thats small and unimportant. So, how do you compare answers of different candidates? You probably cant at least not confidently.

So, every time youre thinking of asking a well-worn, cliched question, consider a refreshing alternative not to catch the candidate off-guard, but to get a more genuine answer from them. Here are some examples:

Old question: Why should we hire you?

Better alternative: If you were hired, how do you think you could help with this project?

Old question: What is your greatest weakness?

Better alternative: Describe a time when you failed in your previous job.

Old question: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

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Youre Behind Schedule A Client Or Employee Needs Your Help How Do You Respond

Lastly, for my third question, If youre falling behind and client or employee needs you to help them with something, how would you respond? I would expect to learn how the potential new hire will handle working under pressure, but most importantly, their willingness to put others before themselves. I would hope for them to say they will help someone out no matter what kind of pressure they are under.

I would have to say that these are my three favorite questions to ask. Finding out certain characteristics of the potential new hire beforehand is not always something that is done. However, its probably one of the most determining factors for me because it gives me some foresight on what kind of worker they will be.

Aside from being the founder of the calendar productivity tool Calendar, John Rampton is an entrepreneur, investor, and startup enthusiast.

Top Behavioral Interview Questions To Ask Candidates

According to the society of human resources management, behavioral interview questions are a very effective interview technique working across various types of organizations making them an important part of the hiring process when evaluating a candidates work experience and work style.

These types of interview questions help the interviewer create a structured process by using the same set of standardized questions to compare and evaluate multiple candidates interviewing for the same job opening.

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What One Skill Makes You The Most Qualified For This Position

While things like culture fit are important, your focus first and foremost is to find someone who possesses those necessary cut-and-dried qualifications to fill that open position.

Thats why a question like this one is so important. Not only do you get to hear more detail about what that candidate considers to be his core competencies, but its also a chance to confirm that he has the appropriate understanding of everything the role entails.

For example, if he touts a skill thats impressivebut totally irrelevantthats a red flag that youre not on the same page about the major duties of that job.

Tell Me About A Time You Failed To Reach Your Goal

I like to ask questions that uncover people with high potential, which is very important for our line of work.

What this question does is show whether the candidate is working from a victim mentality or whether they will do whatever needs to be done to keep going, even when things seem incredibly challenging.

Some examples of poor answers:

• It wasnt my fault
• I had to quit because family/life/job got in the way.
• I couldnt do it because of XYZ

All of these answers to me say that given enough obstacles, the person will quit before even attempting to find a new path.

Good answers are:

• Although I hit the wall, I still kept trying to find a solution.
• Everyone told me it couldnt be done, but I kept on going.
• I dont give up easily, and I am certain I will find a solution one day.

What Im really looking for when I ask this question is to see if the person is visibly uncomfortable, but they never resort to blaming other elements for the failure. This is a great indicator of high potential. These individuals also frequently never admit defeat but rather see the failure as a temporary obstacle that will be resolved at some point in the future.

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Why Should You Conduct Exit Interviews

A well planned and executed exit interviews are a very powerful HR tool, used by an overwhelming majority of top companies.

Research conducted by Burke Incorporated shows that:

• 91% of the Fortune 500 companies conduct exit interviews.

If done right, exit interviews will help you assess the overall experience an employee has had with your company.Hence, you will be able to discover bottlenecks and identify opportunities to improve your retention rates and company culture.

Here are the top 4 benefits of conducting exit interviews: