Interview Questions for Employers to Ask: Your Guide to Selecting the Best Applicants

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<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
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<li>Forget game show type grillings, gimmicky trick questions and competency questions.</li>
<li>Transform your interview process by using a well-designed Structured Interview.</li>
<li>Structured Interviews should explore the candidate’s education, employment history and hobbies, to uncover the key trends and patterns in a candidate’s background.</li>
<li>Increase the chances of the candidate taking the job by including at the end a set of pre-close questions that explore their reasons for wanting the job and the broader context of their job search.</li>
<li>After the interview, give promising candidates a Job Simulation.</li>
<li>You don’t have to do a second interview, but may want to in some circumstances. Avoid third and fourth interviews.</li>
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Avoid These Interviewing Techniques

Here are a few things to avoid:

• Game show type questions: Shows like The Apprentice are purely entertainment and you shouldn’t try to adopt their approach. Aggressive interrogations and bullying are completely inappropriate as well as being ineffective.
• “Killer” and trick questions: Questions like “What animal best represents you?” are patronising and useless and only make the interview seem even more artificial than it already is.
• Competency questions: These try to uncover some desired skill or capability in a candidate: “Give me an example of when you solved a business problem independently.” The problem with them is that candidates can always cherry pick and fashion examples that fit the question (most people could point to times when they’ve been “creative” or “confident”). These might be isolated instances and won’t necessarily give you the bigger picture.

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Use Structured Interviews

To properly understand a candidate you have to look for trends and patterns in their career. This is the purpose of Structured Interviews.

The aim is to get an overview of a candidate from education through their working life up to the present. You go through their life in chronological order and build up a picture of the trends and patterns that help you understand their motivations and skills.

The benefits of Structured Interviews and following a script include:

• It’s easier to identify patterns and trends of behaviour.
• Questions are asked in chronological order making it difficult for candidates to omit information or deceive you because their life story won’t make sense.
• Asking every candidate the same questions allows repeatability so you can easily benchmark candidates against the Great Performance Profile.
• Instead of thinking about your next question, you can focus on listening, allowing you to absorb more nuanced information. 
• The questions are in front of you, so nothing gets missed.
• It reinforces the Promise of a Reference Call (PORC), which should have been introduced to them during the Telephone Interview, and encourages them to provide honest answers.
• The interview questions are labelled with a letter and number. Referencing the questions using their labels when taking notes aids speed of note taking and clarity of notes.

Here are the main sections that you should include in your Structured Interview. A thorough list of labelled questions can be found in the Script for Structured Interviews in the Guides & Checklists section of our website.

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Welcome the Candidate

• Ideally, the candidate should be met at reception a couple of minutes before the interview is scheduled. Greet them as if they were a client; professional, friendly, and confident.
• Make sure to build rapport from the outset, for example, you might ask the candidate “How was your journey?” This may reveal that their daily commute is going to be a nightmare!

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Opening Remarks

• Let each member of the Interview Team introduce themselves.
• Tell the candidate briefly what you’re going to cover in the interview.

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Education

• How a candidate approached their education can be an indicator of their character and motivation. 
• Educational background is less important for more senior jobs than for junior ones. Therefore, questions may vary.
• Don’t ask for education dates as this might be considered grounds for age discrimination.
• Typical questions for junior hires include:
  • “What school accomplishments are you most proud of?”
  • “What clubs or associations were you a member of?”
  • For the purpose of the PORC; “Who was your form tutor?” (Ask them to spell unusual names)... “When I speak to them, what would they say you were like back then?”... “What would they say you could have improved?” Choosing a form tutor is best because they’ve usually had more contact with the candidate and have an overview of academic and pastoral care. (Writing down the form tutor’s name and asking the candidate to spell it out sends a message that you will make a Reference Call, encouraging more truthful answers.)
• Typical questions for senior roles might include:
  • “How did you choose the courses you wanted to study?”
  • “Did you study hard or pick it up quite quickly?”
  • “How happy were you with the grades you received?”

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Employment History

• Ask about all of the candidate’s previous jobs, though move relatively quickly through early jobs, going into more depth on the most recent ones.
• Open with, “Is there any employment not on your CV? Have you left out any short periods of employment or things you felt were irrelevant?”
• General questions include:
  • “What did/does the organisation do?”
  • “What did/do you like most about that job?”
  • “How did/do you know when you’ve done a good job?”
  • “Why did/do you want to leave the job?”... “Why else?”
  • For the purpose of the PORC; “What’s the name of your supervisor?” (Ask them to spell unusual names)... “Where are they working now?” Writing down the name and clarifying spelling sends a message you will call, so they should tell you the truth.
• For managerial positions, you’ll need to ask further questions such as:
  • “How many staff did/do you have in your team?”
  • “How many were/are Great Performers?”... “What were/are their names?”... “Why did/do you consider them a Great Performer?”
• For sales roles, you’ll want to ask specific sales questions such as:
  • “Describe to me how you normally get new customers.”
  • “If you struggled to reach a prospect, how would you get to talk to that person?”

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Passions & Hobbies

• At this point in the interview, asking about the candidate’s hobbies can help to lower the intensity after all the discussion of education and employment. 
• People with interests outside of work tend to be better candidates. I tend to be wary of workaholics!
• However, it’s not hugely relevant to the job and whether you’d employ them so a simple, “What do you do with your spare time?” would suffice.
• Don’t ask anything about their relationship status or whether they have kids, as this could be discriminatory. If they volunteer the information, it’s better not to write it down.

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Reasons for Joining Your Company & Pre-Close

• The pre-close is my SECRET technique to gauge a candidate’s interest.
• This is a really important part of the interview for making sure that the candidate will accept your offer. 
• Ask them if they have concerns about joining your company, what their salary expectations are and whether they’ve applied elsewhere.
• Typical questions might include:
  • “Why do you want to work for this company?”
  • “So I don’t waste anyone’s time, I want to ensure we can afford you. What salary range are you expecting?”
  • “If I could offer you a salary in that range, would you take the job?”
  • “What other jobs have you applied for and what stage are you at with them?”... “How do we compare to them?”
  • “If we offer you a job, how do you think your employer will react and what will be your likely response?” 

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Candidate’s Questions

• It’s important to allow candidates to raise questions and for you to give honest answers: “Do you have any questions you’d like to ask us?”
• To ensure a great fit you must give honest, accurate, and complete answers.
• Be concerned if a candidate has nothing to ask at a first interview; this may be a sign that they’re not very committed (though trainees often don’t have questions and just want the interview to be over!).

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After the Interview

• If after the interview you think you want to hire the candidate then the next step is to do a Job Simulation to test directly their competencies (see our guide Boost Hiring Accuracy: Use Job Simulations & Work Culture Assessments and chapter 13 of my recruitment book). 
• Second interviews aren’t always necessary. You may want to do one if you have to carry on shortlisting, need agreement from a senior leader, or if there are parts of a candidate’s story that require further probing. 
• Avoid having third or fourth interviews. These drag out the process unnecessarily and could alienate the candidate – they might decide to cut their losses and take a job with a faster-moving competitor. 
• It is important to manage a candidate’s expectations by providing a realistic timeline for when they will hear back from you.

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Additional Resources

• Recruiting Book; The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Employees.
• Downloadable PDF guide; How the Pros Interview Candidates: Learn Their Secrets.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Transform Your Interview Process: The Structured Interview Approach.
• Downloadable script; Script for Structured Interviews.
• Article; Interview Questions to Ask if You Wan to Avoid Hiring Mistakes.
• Article; How to Interview Candidates: A Simple Guide to Effective Candidate Assessment.
• Article; How to Interview Candidates: Unlock the Secrets to Finding Your Next Star Employee!‍
• Article; How to Arrange Interviews with Candidates.