Here are the questions top recruiters are asking!
When you’re interviewing candidates for open positions in your practice, what kind of questions are you asking? Are the questions you ask giving you insight into how the candidate will communicate and handle their roles and responsibilities?
There are many questions that interviewers ask. Some are pretty straightforward and may lead you in the direction of asking more complex questions. Typical interviewing questions are:
- Tell me about yourself.
- Why do you want to work for this company?
- What are your greatest strengths?
- What is your biggest weakness?
- Why should we hire you?
Expanding to more of a strategic question base, you are able to discern the process that the applicant is taking to answer the question. Are they pausing to think about the question and then answering it? Or are they answering the question right off the cuff? Either way, it allows the interviewer an opportunity to get a glimpse of the way the candidate will handle their roles and responsibilities.
Strategic Questions
More strategic questions to ask are:
- Describe your time management process?
- Tell me about a time that you had to deal with a difficult coworker?
- How do you handle difficult conversations?
- How do you handle objections?
- What do you do if you do not know the answer to a question?
- What kind of work environment do you work best in?
Take it a step further…
Even more complex questions are:
- Describe a time when you had to quickly respond to a delicate situation?
- Imagine you need to implement a new system that you do not have much experience with. What steps do you take to gather information and ensure successful execution?
- Has there ever been a time when you have not been able to reach your goals? What approach did you take to achieve them moving forward?
- If you were provided with $10,000.00 to plan a team-building event, how would you allocate the funds?
Observe Responses
Observe the interviewee’s responses, their body language, and how they are delivering the answers to the questions. An example of a potential response from a candidate is that they would create a budget for a team-building event, and if there were money left over, they would save it for a future opportunity. This particular candidate portrays that they are conscientious about a budget. This would be an excellent quality to have on your team. Through another candidate’s answer, you may find that they may struggle with having difficult conversations.
Hire The Right Person
Asking meaningful questions allows engagement and helps create awareness. It can also assist the interviewer in providing recommendations for training plans for the prospective candidate. You will be surprised at what you learn about someone when you pose a question that may be a little more thought-provoking than asking them to explain their current roles and responsibilities. Although a candidate may be able to handle the job, diving deeper into your interview questions will allow you to hire the right person for the job.
Understanding how someone communicates will give you insight into their thought process. Interviews can be stale and impersonal, but asking more complex or strategic questions will guide you to find more of the ideal candidates for your organization.
