Top Five (5) Questions to Ask a Candidate During a Job Interview

Recruiting can be a headache as it requires an investment of energy and time. If it is not properly conducted, employers could risk having a bad hire. However, you can watch out for signs and red flags in every interview if you ask the right questions. Certain questions are designed to go past the candidate’s preparedness to fetch the real personality and interest of the candidate.

We must clarify that our top five questions are not entirely cast in stone. Feel free to borrow, modify, and change as you wish, be sure to add any more additional questions that have helped you in our comment section.

What do you know about us and how does it influence your decision to work with us?

While this question is quite common, there is a trick to it. It helps you differentiate candidates who have a genuine interest in your company from those who randomly applied because they saw a vacancy ad. It also helps you to determine if a candidate has a good knowledge of the role they applied for and if they fit into your company’s model and culture.

“Tell me about a time when…” question

Candidates often spend a lot of time preparing for interviews and they expect some conventional questions for which they are fully prepared. To draw out more than they have prepared for, you should ask more “tell me about a time when” questions. For example, “Tell me about a time when you could not meet a client’s deadline, how did you handle it?”, or “Tell me about a time when you faced a difficult work situation, how did you overcome it?”. These types of questions can reveal a candidate’s communication, leadership, organizational, stress management, and time management skills.

Role-play question

A role-play interview is an exercise where candidates act out a scenario with either a group or an interviewer, to measure their interpersonal skills. These types of questions will help you to assess how the candidate will react in certain situations. An example question could be, “Your team has failed to deliver the expected product features and your Boss calls you shouting because he is very angry, how will you reply to him?”

Where do you see yourself in [x] years?

This question is easy and popular but very easy to fail, not because there is a right or wrong answer to it. The answer to this question is relative but it provides you enough information to know a candidate who may not grow with your company, or whose goals and vision do not align with yours. It can also help you note a candidate who is serious with their career and growth, it means they can grow and also help your business grow. On the other hand, if a candidate does not have a clear answer to this question on the spot, this is a red flag.

“Off-guard” question

An off-guard question does exactly as the name specifies, it is meant to throw the candidate off-guard. These are unrelated questions asked to either help the candidate relax or panic, depending on the mental fortitude and confidence level of the candidate. These questions can also help you discern how well the candidate performs in sudden unforeseen situations when they are put under pressure to deliver.

A very common one is, “How many jellybeans can fit in a suitcase?” or “Do you watch football, Messi or Ronaldo?” This is a guesstimate question that does not necessarily require a correct answer. It is asked to observe the candidate’s thought process and problem-solving skills. You would want to check if they ask you additional clarifying questions? Do they break the problem down into smaller pieces? It is advisable to ask the candidate to think out loud for you to observe their problem-solving skills.

To wrap this up, there is no hard-and-fast rule to this, but you have a chance to gather as much information as possible from an interview with these kinds of questions. Recruiting can get frustrating sometimes, especially if you are recruiting for a tech role but, you can delegate part of your workload to Codeln. Contact us via our mail — info@codeln.com, and on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and IG.