What Are Your Biggest Strengths
I’m not sure why interviewers ask this question your resume and experience should make your strengths readily apparent.
Even so, if you’re asked, provide a sharp, on-point answer. Be clear and precise. If you’re a great problem solver, don’t just say that: Provide a few examples, pertinent to the opening, that prove you’re a great problem solver. If you’re an emotionally intelligent leader, don’t just say that: Provide a few examples that prove you know how to answer the unasked question.
In short, don’t just claim to have certain attributes — prove you have those attributes.
Great Questions To Ask In An Interview
You probably already know that an interview isnt just a chance for the hiring manager to grill you with interview questionsits your opportunity to sniff out whether a job is the right fit for you.
Which means: Its important to go in with some questions to ask of your own. What do you want to know about the position? The company? The department? The team?
To get you thinking, weve put together a list of key questions to ask in an interview. We definitely dont suggest asking all of them rapid-firesome of this stuff will certainly be covered during the course of your discussion, and you can weave in other questions as you go.
But when the inevitable, So, do you have any questions for us? part of the interview comes? Use this list to make sure youve covered all your bases.
Do You Work Best Alone Or On A Team
What kind of work will the candidate be performing if theyre selected for the position? This question helps determine if theyre suited to the types of assignments theyll receive. Regardless if they’ll work remotely or in the office, someone who enjoys solitary work and long stretches of uninterrupted time may not thrive in a position that requires collaboration or multitasking.
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Questions To Ask Employees During An Interview
When hiring a new employee, its important to ask the right questions.
There are some interview questions that are a given we all know how to put a good spin on the classic greatest weakness question. Its also expected that youll have potential employees review their job history and qualifications.
But how do you really dig into what makes someone tick as an employee, and how do you determine if theyll be a good fit for your businessnot only in terms of their skills, but also their personality, and as a part of your company culture?
To help you come up with the perfect list of interview questions to ask potential employees, Ive divided this list into five categories: personality questions, culture fit questions, background and work experience questions, work habits and working style questions, and career goal questions. Be sure to check out my article on How to Hire Your First Employee as well.
Pick and choose a handful that feel most applicable from each list, or ask them all . With a well-rounded list of interview questions, finding the perfect candidate for your open position should be no problem at all.
What Questions To Ask
An easier question might be: What questions not to ask?! There are so many ways you can go with your interview. Our best advice is to start with whats most important to record. Are there certain stories or memories you really love and want to hear? Is there a time of their life youre interested in? Are there unanswered questions youve always wanted to ask? Let your priority stories guide your interview.
Its best to write down at least a few questions to get your interview started. If youre a more casual interviewer, you may enjoy a less structured interview and more of a conversation. If theres a lot of information you want to ask about, youll need to keep your interviewee on task with a list of questions.
Read our 200+ Interview Questions guide to help you plan your interview.
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Do You Have Any Questions For Us
The classic way to finish the interview, this question is important for a number of reasons. It gives the candidate a chance to follow up on any talking points from the interview, it lets them dig into issues that you haven’t covered in enough detail and it shows you how much research a candidate has done about your company.
You should expect every candidate to have some questions, if they don’t it’s definitely a red flag.
After you’ve got a few introductory questions out the way it’s important to try and challenge candidates and make them think. Here are a few thought provoking interview questions that force agile thinking.
+ Questions To Ask In An Informational Interview
Informational interviews are the key to expanding your network and opening yourself up to unexpected career opportunities. Here are 40+ questions you need to ask in your next informational interview.
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Can You Tell Me What The Career Paths Are For This Department And What Sort Of Advancements I Could Work Towards
This question can give you a solid idea of the mobility within the company. Again, as weve said over and over again, the ultimate goal of any job you take is to help advance you on your career path and the last thing you want to do is take a dead end job with no hope of ever moving forward or growing.
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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E Interview Questions For Managers
If youre hiring team leaders, you want to make sure they can answer well to the above types of interview questions. But, hiring for each managerial position will entail an additional set of questions specifically to judge the candidates management skills . Depending on the seniority of the managers role, there are different interview questions to ask managers:
- Whats your approach to delegating work to employees? How do you ensure that tasks are completed?
- How would you describe your management style?
- Tell me about a time you had to deal with a team member who constantly opposed your ideas. How did you handle it?
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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Questions To Ask About The Hiring Manager:
How long have you been with the company?
If the interviewer has been with the company for a long time, then you can assume that they like working there. Whether the employees like the work is an important consideration when applying for a job.
What has allowed you to be successful with this company?
You can learn a lot about a company by the way employees talk about it. The person interviewing you should have a good grasp of the skills needed to be successful, and knowing what traits, characteristics, and behaviors are expected can help you prepare yourself for the job.
Why did you choose this company?
It can be valuable to know what employees like about their place of work. With this question you can learn about your interviewers perceptions of their company and why they work there.
Has your role changed since youve been here?
This is a good way to gauge whether employees of this company typically stay in the same role, or whether they are encouraged to adapt and grow. Before accepting the position it can be useful to know if promotions or transfers are likely.
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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What Percentage Of Employees Was Brought In By Current Employees
Employees who love their jobs naturally recommend their company to their friends and peers. The same is true for people in leadership positions — people naturally try to bring on board talented people they previously worked with. They’ve built relationships, developed trust, and shown a level of competence that made someone go out of their way to follow them to a new organization.
And all of that speaks incredibly well to the quality of the workplace and the culture.
What Type Of Employee Tends To Succeed Here And What Qualities Are The Most Important For Succeeding Here
This question sheds light on whether the organisation has a clear idea of who they want to employ in the role. Hopefully, the ideal candidate looks a lot like you and if you feel like youve missed something they mention in response, you can always email the interviewer later to reiterate how well you think youll fit in.
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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?
What Cause Are You Passionate About
What cause are you passionate about, and how do you take action on it?
We want to understand if the candidate is not only a role fit but if theyre a culture fit. As a social enterprise, were not for profit, but for a purpose therefore, if they arent actively passionate about a specific cause, then they will lack the motivation of our bottom line. You can have the strongest salesperson or the most detail-orientated operations manager, but if you dont find the right culture fit, then we know that they wont be interested in going the extra mile.
Lauren Ott, Chief Kits Officer: Kits for a Cause
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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.
What Is The Worst Conflict Youve Managed
Whats the worst conflict youve managed between two subordinates or work colleagues? How did you resolve it?
A great candidate will actively work to manage through conflict on their teams. If theyre able to find a way to mitigate negative feelings or behaviors, they do, and if they cant, they assist team members in coping to the best of their ability. The right candidate isnt afraid to enlist the help of their boss in monitoring and improving team dynamics and can provide thoughtful input to help resolve the situation.
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Hiring Process Questions To Ask In An Interview
One of the hardest parts of job searching is the constant unknowns. Hiring process questions are good questions to ask in an interview to give you a sense of whats going to happen next, how quickly they are looking to fill the position, and give you an opportunity to finish the interview as strongly as you started.
17. What are the next steps in the interview process?
This question shows that you are eager to move forward in the process. It will also help you gain important information about the timeline for hiring so that you can follow up appropriately.
18. Do you have an ideal start date in mind?
This is another way to get an understanding of their timeline and when you can expect to hear from them.
19. Are there any further details I can provide that will be helpful?
This question allows your interviewer to circle back to anything that concerns them about your experience or resume without phrasing the question negatively such as asking, is there anything that concerns you about my fit for this role? You dont want them to be thinking of reasons not to hire you, but you do want to have the opportunity to explain yourself if the interviewer has doubts about your qualifications.
20. Do you have any further questions to ask me?
This can be a less-detailed alternative question to the above. It leaves the door open for the interviewer to ask for clarification on one last thing before concluding the interview.
Questions You Need To Ask At Your Next Job Interview
Job interviews arent only for employers to learn about candidates. They are also an opportunity for candidates to ask questions and learn more about the role they are applying to. The interview might be the only face-to-face meeting you have with someone from the company before they make their hiring decision, so it is important that you dont waste your chance to learn what you can about the workplace, the role, and the company culture. With the right questions, you can learn more about a position in the interview than you could ever learn from the job posting or company website.
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What Kind Of Work Environment Are You Used To
Managing a team is, by no means, an easy position in which to survive and thrive. Most businesses are full of high-pressure situations that can bring out the best in your team members.
Those same high-pressure situations can also reduce the likelihood that a new manager will stay long enough to learn how to function in such a fast-paced environment.
Asking the interviewee what kind of work environment they are used to will help you understand whether they are well-suited to manage your team or not.
If you dont get an informative answer the first time through, you may need to ask follow-up questions such as, Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a high-pressure situation. How did you handle it?
Do You Like Working With A Team Or Working Alone
This really depends on what opening the job seekers are applying for. Is it a desk job that only requires them to be by themselves self or is it work that demands coordination and communication with others?
If you analyze that the applicants are people who are flexible, willing to do multi-tasking, and wouldnt be bothered if at times they work alone or with a team, these could be the best professionals to hire.
This question has more importance at this time due to the current remote working environment.
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