Tips for interviewers: What questions to ask!

You’re hiring. You know what the job is and what you need people to do. You know you want a good egg who’s going to fit in the team nicely, get on with everyone and do a great job. In your head, you know who you need and now you’ve got to go out and find them. The applications are in and you’ve cherry-picked your favourite CVs (hopefully ones written by Kenny Refresh!), but is that enough?

You can see from a CV that a person has, or at least can do the job you need them to do for you, but you can’t really tell much more about the person than that. Sometimes a CV can make it blindingly obvious that the candidate can literally walk into the job and perform it to a good standard, but you aren’t necessarily sure what they’re like as a colleague, hence, the job interview process.

For some the interview process can be a fun exercise, meeting new people and learning their stories, but for others, it can actually be quite intimidating. What kind of information do you really need that can’t be found on the CV? It can almost feel a bit like speed dating, where you’re trying to ascertain the most important information without really knowing what that information looks like. So here are a few tips to get you started planning for the interview process.

1. Tell me about yourself?

We all know why everyone is meeting and what this interview is all about. But an interview is a conversation, not a grilling or a trial. You want to get a good idea of who this person in front of you really is, not just what their CV says. So it’s always good to encourage an open, free-flowing conversation about who they are.

We all know that no one is comfortable when they are nervous, and if you aren’t putting the candidate in the best possible position how will you know what they are really like? The best way to do this is to allow them the chance to open up and talk about themselves. Ask follow up questions, ask about their family, children, pets, and hobbies. This is a great way to encourage the candidate to let their hair down and break the ice, which ultimately is what you want them to do in order to judge their personality fit with your team.

2. Talk about their CV

Now you’ve broken the ice and encouraged the candidate to talk about themselves/get comfortable, it’s time to start investigating how their journey brought them in front of you. Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to change jobs, some are looking for a change of industry, some are looking to progress up the ladder, and others are simply unhappy with their current role and would like to change. It’s the worst kept secret in the job market that the number one priority for most job seekers is money, so asking questions like ‘why this position?’ can sometimes be redundant if a solid foundation has not been laid.

If asked out of the blue, the answer to this question will usually be ‘it pays what I want to get paid!’, not that a good candidate would say this in an interview! But if you start with their CV and ask the candidate about their professional journey you can then start to understand what truly motivates them, which is far better than putting them on the spot!

3. Investigate their experience

As mentioned above, you can often tell from a CV when a candidate is right for the actual day to day of a role, but it’s important to scratch under the surface of what may just be a well-written CV. Identifying the job responsibilities of the open position is important, but you are likely well aware of these, what you need to do is ask the candidate when and how they have specifically experienced the tasks required. Avoid at all costs ‘generic’ and ‘irrelevant’ questions. These are often cruel and unusual and used to make the candidate uncomfortable, which serves no purpose. Instead, try to phrase a question in a way that makes it obvious why you are asking it. Instead of asking ‘tell me about a time you did something difficult’, be more nuanced and professional, such as ‘In this job you will often be asked to complete tasks you have no experience with and may find difficult, is this something you have any experience with?’. A far better way to phrase a similar question, but in a way that doesn’t intimidate your candidate!

4. Encourage conversation

Here at Kenny Refresh we often talk to candidates about avoiding the ‘interview mode’, where people start talking in an overly formal, robotic, rehearsed manner. This is the result of a culture of intimidation that has built up over years of traditional thought that a job interview is between a young candidate and an old veteran trying to continuously trip up and test the candidate. Such days are long gone and can really damage company culture if allowed to continue unchecked.

The whole point of an interview is to get to know the candidate, and for them to get to know you/your company. If you are so intimidating that the candidate feels the need to build a protective shell of formality are you really utilising the interview process to its fullest extent? Or are you simply encouraging the most extroverted candidates to succeed? Therefore the best approach would be to treat this as a relatively candid conversation, no tricks, no psychological games, just a back and forth conversation between peers discussing a potential employment opportunity!

5. Pay attention to the candidate’s questions

You’ve asked everything you can think of to ask and you’re quite happy that the conversation has come to a natural end. But it is important to open the floor to the candidate just in case. An interview is not just for the company, but for the candidate too. They need to make sure that this is the right career move for them, and you can’t assume that they will accept a job offer, which is the worst-case scenario for a company!

A well-prepared candidate won’t just ask generic questions, they will come to you with questions that are carefully considered and will reveal to you their true priorities, which can make them even more appealing to you and your company. Listen to what they want to know and give them as full and robust an answer as possible, this is your turn to try to impress so make sure you take it. Don’t be too arrogant to assume that your company is perfect and inherently compatible with every candidate, just in the same way a person is not just their CV, a company is not just their reputation, so make sure you sell yourself!