What questions to ask in a job interview?

Making the most of questions when interviewing a candidate can be crucial in identifying the person with the right skills and abilities for your business.

There is this excellent article aboutstrategic interview questions to ask candidates. Below, however, you will find broader questions.

An organization that manages to walk on an accelerated ramp of success cannot depend only on the network of relationships and indications it gets when it comes to hiring employees.

Everyone wants to find candidates with more initiative, courage, resilience and compatibility with their company. Today we've separated 6 questions for you to collect traditional information from an interview, but also identify people with the determination to be awesome.

1. What was your last experience and why did you leave the last position?

In addition to identifying the candidate's potential, it is important to know their professional background, however, considering that we have gone through many changes throughout life, to really know the interviewee's present, it is important to give preference to more recent facts.

Therefore, knowing what he was doing before seeking this opportunity helps him to better understand what he is looking for at the moment. This makes it easy to analyze the compatibility of your goals with those of the company.

In the case of someone who is changing areas, ask the reason for this change, rephrasing the question to "Why did you decide to change areas?". Behind these simple questions, there is a lot of content to investigate.

We can highlight the following reasons as the main motivations for this question:

Understand the candidate's relationship with the work (how does he see the work environment and its leaders? As partners or as competitors?)

Detect possible chronic behaviors and doubtful ethics (if you suspect, proceed with the conversation, questioning more details about previous works);

Understand the reasons for the current search (what motivates this candidate? Salary, quality of life, future perspective?)

Make a hook to understand how his relationship with teams is (do you prefer to work in groups or prefer routines with less interaction?).

2. What were your biggest achievements?

Take the hook from the previous questions and be curious about what he considers to be his greatest achievement. Say that it does not necessarily have to have taken place within a company, but that it can be represented by something remarkable in your career, academic and professional training, etc.

This question is interesting to understand how the candidate prioritizes the results he has already brought in other environments. What does he consider most and least relevant among his achievements? What types of achievements show the resilience and perseverance you want to identify in a talent in your company?

A hint here is that usually people tend to answer this question by counting the result of a group. So, if the answer path is to “Our project had a strong impact on my last organization's cash balance”, for example, complement it with a new question “But what was your role in building this project and how did it contribute to the generated result?”.

3. How did you handle failure and recover?

It is important to detect the candidate's resilience. People can often try to hide the mistakes they made in order to convey a more positive image of themselves in the interview. However, the profile that delivers the most results is not the one that does not make mistakes, but the one that best overcomes adversity with persistence and creativity until finding a way out. Mistakes will always be made in the business world, goals will not be met and projects will sink. You need employees who can bounce back when crises strike, rather than giving up.

In addition, it is an opportunity to see whether the candidate starts talking about his own mistake or prefers to talk about someone else's mistake. Extend the question to both forms, showing interest in what he has to say.

4. Describe an idea you had for improving the last processes you worked on. What was the result?

It is very common to find the candidate profile that generates ideas. It is important to beware of people who inflate themselves with credibility just because they were the creators of solutions.

You certainly want employees on your team who, in addition to finding solutions to problems, will act on these ideas. People who will create improvements in the processes that work to optimize their routines will do this even more tactically and strategically as they move up the company's career path.

5. Tell me a project you had to work on for an extended period of time. How did you stay engaged?

If asked in this way, you can investigate more than just what the candidate's latest projects were. In this way, it is possible to assess what are his self-motivating factors and how he faces a task until it is complete.

The fact is that we have many forms of distraction in today's world, such as social networks, cell phones, emails, games, news, etc. Being able to stay focused on a single task is certainly a challenge, even more so for younger, more connected generations. Try to identify whether the candidate will be an employee capable of remaining focused for long periods of time, and in an engaged manner, until the result is generated.

6. How do you see yourself in the future and how will you get there?

Preferably, value this question a little more, creating a specific situation or transforming it into a dynamic. For example, set a 3-year deadline for making the question more concrete and complement it by asking what he has been doing to achieve this goal. At this point it is more important to understand how the candidate has acted to reach his goals and how much he is willing to accept risks and adjust his path to get where he intends.

Pay attention to automated responses and value sincerity. Running away from those traditional “Miss Universe answers” ​​is important, and shows that the candidate has the confidence to speak the truth without trying to manipulate the interviewer.

Conclusion

The universe of possible questions in an interview is huge and depends on specific factors of the organization, the vacancy, the stage of the selection process, etc. Use these questions as a starting point to help you build your interview script.

Make it clear to your organization that the interview step is critical in the context of recruiting. This is where you will ensure the entry of people who will share the challenges of raising the level of your company with you, so dedicate the time and effort of your HR team and managers.

PS: If you are an entrepreneur (or planning to become one) we prepared some other articles to help you. Check:

How to Attract Employees & Turn Your Small Business into a Talent Magnet

5 Books Every Entrepreneur Must Read This Year - Even Before Starting a Business

The 5 Top Fiverr Gigs for New Entrepreneurs and Creators