You’ve used the AcuMax Index to narrow down your candidate pool and now you’re ready to bring candidates in for an interview, but what should you ask them? Try incorporating these five questions into your next interview to learn a little bit more about the person you may hire and to help your candidate learn about whether this position is the right fit for them.
1. Why do you want to work here?
Surprisingly, job applicants may not actually know much about the company they’ve sent their resume to; you may find out that they don’t know much about who your company is or what you do. This question will also tell you a little bit about what the applicant looks for in an employer, what they like about your company and why they thought it would be a good fit, or why they may be excited to work for your company.
2. What is it about this position that made you think you’d be a good fit?
This question probes a little bit about the role and the job description. This will show you whether the candidate actually read the job description and can recall anything about the position that they feel would make them a good fit. Asking this question will also provide you will valuable information about your employment listings and whether your position descriptions are attracting the kind of apllicants you are trying to reach.
3. Tell me about a work situation that you wish you could go back and handle differently.
This question helps you understand a candidates ability to grow and be introspective about ways to improve at work and, is especially helpful for management candidates. People, in theory, are less likely to make the same mistakes twice and this helps you understand how a candidate believes a situation would have been best handled and what lessons they were able to learn from their previous mistakes.
4. Tell me about a time that you had a difficult working relationship with a colleague, what was the challenge in working with them and how were you able to improve the situation?
As much as we wish everyone in a workplace got along, the reality is that there will be times of friction between coworkers. What you’re looking to find out is how your candidate handles interpersonal conflict and their emotional maturity at handling conflict at work. You may have a candidate who can do the job well, but if they cause conflict along the way they may cause more problems than they solve.
5. How would you describe your work style and preferences?
The results of the AcuMax Index assessment will already give you some insight into your candidates work style, but it is still a good question to ask job candidates to see how they self-assess their preferences. Knowing whether a person is independent or collaborative and if they’re a self-starter or need a lot of direction will help you know if they’re the right fit for the job, team and the company. This is also a good time to ask about preferences and to talk about the expectations of the role. If a candidate really needs a flexible schedule and this job doesn’t offer flexibility, you should be up front about that. Define expectations around performance and how quickly you expect new hires to start performing in the role. Expectations should be discussed and set before the end of an interview, so that your candidate can reflect on whether this is the right fit for them— interviews really are for both the company and the candidate.
