How to Ask Interview Questions

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As you begin searching for great employees to join your team or company, you need to think about the interviews you have to conduct. While knowing the right and wrong questions to ask is important, it’s also important to know how to ask those questions. Interview questions can be misleading, misinterpreted, and you give candidates false hope if you aren’t careful.

While in an interview, you as an employer need to pay special attention to your body language, word choice, and even your tone when asking questions. To help you out, here are five tips on asking interview questions:

1. Pay Attention to Tone

You’re probably a really busy person. You need to fill the position quickly. Maybe you get straight to the point with your questions. Maybe you ask broad questions. No matter what questions you’re asking, you need to pay attention to the tone you’re using when asking them. If you ask them quickly or passively, a candidate could get the impression that you don’t care about them or filling the job. Remember, you’re making a first impression with each candidate, so it’s important that you have a professional tone during the interview.

2. Prepare Your Questions

One of the worst things you can do for the candidate’s experience is to not be prepared. Avoiding this requires not only having questions ready for candidates, but reviewing their resumes and cover letters so that you can ask more specific and targeted questions. Remember, you’re trying to figure out if this person can do the job and also fit in with your company culture.

3. Have a Conversation

Since you’re trying to get to know candidates, it helps to have a conversation during the interview. While there is specific information you need to learn from the interview, it allows them to talk about their experiences, passions, and their ideal job and work setting. Having a more natural conversation with candidates will help them be more relaxed and willing to answer all of your questions.

4. Listen and Respond

While a conversation is a key element to every successful interview, you also need to make sure you are listening to what candidates are saying and respond to that. You have prepared questions, but you also need to ask follow-up questions to bounce off what the candidates are saying. Your interview may end up going a different way than you expected, but that can be a really great thing because you could end up finding the perfect candidate. Listening to candidates will help you learn about them and their experiences as employees.

5. Be Honest

During your interview, it may be tempting to talking about only the exciting or fascinating aspects of the position, but you need to be upfront and honest about everything the position entails. It can turn off recent hires if you tell them one thing during an interview and expect something completely different from them as an employee. Be honest with your expectations and be honest with the job requirements. Remember, you could be talking to someone you are going to hire and work with.

Do you have any tips on asking interview questions? How do you handle interviews? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!

The Right Interview Questions

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You probably have a huge stack of resumes and cover letters sitting on your desk. Or maybe they are sitting in your inbox. Either way, you are dreading reading them all. Even after carefully reading them and selecting a candidate, you could end up with an employee who turns out to not be what you thought.

While things like resumes and cover letters are certainly helpful in finding candidates, it’s important to focus on the interview. You can’t replace things like first impressions, responses to questions, and dealing with the stress of an interview with the information in resumes and cover letters. However, if you aren’t asking the right questions in the interview, you could still end up hiring someone you think is a great fit, but turns out to not be what you were looking for. Here are a few questions you should be asking in an interview:

1.  Can you tell me about a challenging work situation you experienced and what the situation resulted in?

By asking this question to candidates, you are going to learn how they handle stress and how they perceive results. You should be looking for honest answers, but also answers that have positive results. Candidates should be trying to show you that they work through issues and strive for positive results.

2. Why do you want to work here?

“It seems like a fun work environment.” “I really like the way the company is structured.” “Your brand is really great.” These are typical responses that don’t really carry any meaning. If a candidate gives you an answer like these, you’ll be able to tell they haven’t done much research. Look for specific answers about your company and show that thought and time was put into preparing for the interview.

3. What would you do differently, if you were to start your career over?

The ideal candidate would say nothing and are happy that their career path has lead them to you. But, we don’t live in an ideal world, so you should be looking for answers that focus on, growth, learning, and positive actions. You want a candidate who can recognize mistakes and is willing to make the necessary corrections to get back on track.

4. Where would you like to be in 5 years, career wise?

Sure, it may be a stereotypical question, but it’s an important one to ask. Interviewers sometimes avoid it because of overuse, but it serves a great purpose. You are looking for employees that are going to be dedicated to your organization and want to work for you. By asking this particular question, you can find out the goals of the candidate and if they match those of your company.

5. What type of work environment do you function best in?

As the one interviewing, you should have a handle on the work environment this candidate will be in. Is it fast? Hectic? Slow? Quiet? Once you are able to answer this question for yourself, you can ask candidates what type of work environment they work best in to ensure the two match. Employees who don’t fit with their work environments tend to be unhappy, stressed, and seek out other opportunities.

When it’s all said and done, you need to be asking interview questions that get to the heart of the situation: does this employee fit. Your questions should be tailored to your organization, the requirements of the position, and your overall goals.

Having trouble finding, interviewing, or qualifying candidates? We can help you!