Careful interviewing is a skill to be mastered. Avoiding generic questions in interviews is crucial to uncover both meaningful insights, and to understand the candidate’s unique fit for the role and your team. Generic questions often deliver predictable, rehearsed responses that fail to reveal the depth of a candidate’s experience, skills, and personality. Questions such as: tell me about yourself, why should we hire you, what are your greatest strengths (and even worse), what are your greatest weaknesses? Cap this off with where do you see yourself in 3-5 years and you’re guaranteed to be told: “to be a productive member of a team that prides themselves on a strong work ethic and working together to surpass our goals.”
Instead, prepare your questions in advance, tailoring your questions based on the candidates resume, rather than simply a one size fits all. When interviewing make sure you have questions that reflect both the hard skills and soft skills of the job. Hard skills such as the CRM system that you use, or the ability to read a P&L statement. Soft skills, are more reflective of a persons emotional intelligence which is incredible important when hiring for either sales or leadership roles.
With the role you are hiring in mind, set your questions with the following five tips in mind:
- Open-ended questions – Let the candidate do most of the talking. (Elicits more information than closed-ended questions.
- Question layering – Continue to ask additional questions until you get specific and the truth. (useful in overcoming a rehearsed answer or lie)
- Role Plays – Give a candidate a realistic situation- together act out the scenario Demonstrate knowledge, skills and ability to think on their feet.
- Situational questions – Give the candidate a scenario and ask how they would handle it.
- Behavioural Questions – Ask a candidate to describe how they dealt with a past situation. (past behaviour predicts future performance)
When you ask tailored and specific questions that address the candidate’s past experiences, problem-solving abilities, and interpersonal skills you are able foster a more engaging and informative conversation. You will gain a clearer picture of how the candidate approaches challenges, along with their potential fit within your organizations culture. On the other side, you are also showing your investment in them as a possible member of the team, rather than another person to check off the list in your attempt to fill the role. Interviews are difficult for most people, helping candidates feel at ease and able to open up enough to show who they really are, while you get the opportunity to share your company culture in a positive light is a win-win.
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