The Metiss Group's Blog

We’ve all heard stories about silly interview questions aimed at gauging a candidate’s fit: “If you were a tree, what would you be and why?”, “What animal are you most like?”, “If you were to get rid of one state in the U.S., which would it be and why?”.

Also, there are the mind-bending questions Google asks trying to determine how smart a candidate is: “When there’s a wind blowing, does a round-trip by plane take more time, less time, or the same time?”, “Using only a 4-minute hourglass and a 7-minute hourglass, how can you measure 9 minutes.”, “At 3:15, what is the angle between the minute and hour hands on an analog clock?”.

While hiring managers may have good reasons to ask these questions, asking this single question can provide much more insight into a candidate’s qualifications: “What would you consider the most significant accomplishment in your career?”.

Follow up these with these probing questions:

• Tell me about your role and the team involved; why were you chosen?
• What were the actual results achieved?
• When did the project take place and how long did it take?
• What were the 3-4 biggest challenges you faced and how did you deal with them?
• When did you go the extra mile or take the initiative?
• Explain your manager’s style and whether you liked it.
• What were some of the biggest mistakes you made?
• What aspects of the project did you truly enjoy?
• What aspects did you not especially care about and how did you handle them?
• Give examples of how you managed and influenced others.
• What would you do differently if you could do it again?
• What type of formal recognition did your receive?

You’ll be amazed what you can learn about a candidate by digging deep into just this one event.  Empower your hiring managers to ask insightful interview questions, and you make more successful hires.

Source: Lou Adler of The Adler Group

This entry was posted on February 17, 2014 at 5:00 am and is filed under Leadership, Selection. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.