How to write interview questions to get evidence you need to identify the right person

Along with resumes and application forms and reference checks, interviews are an important component of the process that will assist you to identify the right person to hire—as distinct from the “best” person.

Interviews are an opportunity to learn more about candidates than what you learned from their resumes or application forms. It’s an opportunity to collect evidence about candidates’ previous on-the-job experience. Have they done the right things in the right way for your workplace?

The questions you ask during interviews determine the quality of the information you gather. Before writing your questions, be clear about what you want to learn from the candidates’ answers.

Questions should be tailored to the vacancy to be filled and to the culture of your organization.

If you ask questions because they are the questions that everyone is asking, you can be assured that those are the questions the candidates have prepared themselves to answer. You will learn little about candidates from their well-rehearsed answers. 

There are three considerations when deciding what you will ask about:

Your top performers—What do they do that makes them successful? Write and ask questions that require candidates to describe how they have responded to circumstances similar to what they will experience if hired. Do the candidates provide evidence of having responded as your top performers would respond?

Your organization’s values—What candidates have done previously tells you about their values related to integrity, collaboration, teamwork, customer services, etc. Ask questions to ascertain if the candidates’ past behaviour corresponds to how you would want them to perform. Has what they have done demonstrated that their integrity or commitment to collaboration aligns with that of your organization?

Your organization’s future—What skills, competencies and values are required of staff members who will help carry your organization to its desired future? Use interviews to determine if candidates possess what you will need from them to move your organization forward.

Use the following guidelines when writing interview questions:

Think past tense: Ask about what candidates have done, not what they will do. You want evidence of how they have acted, not speculation about what they might do. Keep in mind the principle of behaviour description interviews (BDI). It states that, “Past performance is the best predictor of future performance.” People tend to respond to situations in the same ways as they responded to similar circumstances in the past. Does what you hear from the candidate align with what you would expect top performers to do and the values of your organization? Begin your requests for information with phrases such as, “Describe a time when …” or “Recall when you were …”

Keep your questions short: Challenge yourself to write questions that could be tweeted, especially back when tweets were limited to just 140 characters. The longer the question, the more likely you are to provide hints about how you want it answered. Candidates will listen to interviewers’ words for hints about what they want to hear. The more talkative interviewers are, the less effective they become.

Be prepared to ask followup questions: Probe to learn more. The more you learn about candidates, the better prepared you are to decide who is the right person to hire. Ask when and where what they describe occurred. Encourage them with “tell me more.” Seek clarification when required. Point out inconsistencies.

Plan how you will assess candidates: Create an assessment tool that consists of a rubric against which you assess candidates. In this way, you will be prepared to compare candidates against standards you established prior to the interview and not to each other.

Prepare to take notes: Create a note-taking form that includes your initial request for information, followup questions and the assessment rubric. 

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Participants in Interview Right to Hire Right workshops will have opportunities to craft and receive feedback on questions they can use the next time they have a vacancy to file. Contact Nelson to schedule a workshop for your leadership team (nmscott@telus.net or 780-232-3828).

Want to hire the right people? Then ask the right questions!

The objective of any hiring process is to find the right person to fill your vacancy.

Because the time you spend with each candidate is limited—typically an interview will only be 45-60 minutes—you don’t have any time to waste. It’s critical that you ask questions that will yield high-quality information about the candidates on which to base your hiring decision.

During my Interview Right to Hire Right workshops, I suggest that deciding what to ask during interviews begins with two questions. 1) Who are your top performers? 2) What makes them successful?

Pinpointing what makes them successful may require a few supplementary questions: How do their actions reflect the values of your organizations? How do they respond to common situations in your workplace? How do they deal with the unexpected?

If your top performers have specific behaviours that make them—and by extension, your organization—successful, then the right people to hire are those who have performed in similar ways in previous jobs.

That’s WHY you ask the questions you will ask, but WHAT will you ask? That depends how you answered the question about what makes top performers successful.

If a key to their success is their ability to work collaboratively with co-workers, ask about collaboration. If your top performers provide great customers service, learn how the candidates have served customers. Or maybe you should ask about time management or decision-making, because that’s what your top performers do well.

Make a list of what your top performers do well and you will soon have a list of topics to ask about during a hiring interview. 

Now, let’s focus on how to collect the evidence you need to make your hiring decisions. It’s time to write your interview questions.

Because you are seeking evidence of how the candidates have responded to circumstances similar to what your staff faces, ask about past on-the-job experiences. Phrase these requests in the past tense:

Describe a task that required you to work collaboratively with one or more co-workers.

Describe a time when your customer service skills were important.

Tell us about when there were several tasks that required your attention.

Think about a work-related decision you made recently. How did you make that decision?

These requests are meant to initiate conversation about each topic to be explored during the interview. 

I find that it improves the quality of candidate responses to provide these initial questions in writing. As you ask the question, pass a card bearing the question to the candidate, who now is able both to hear and read the question. This reduces the potential that the question will be misinterpreted and the need to repeat questions.

In a previous article, I wrote that you should anticipate that the candidates’ responses to the initial question will be incomplete. Prepare for this by creating followup questions to encourage the candidate to tell you more and to ensure you will end the interview with as complete a picture of the candidate as possible.

These questions can be listed as a checklist on your note-taking form.  

Asking followup questions enables you to learn more about the candidates. The more you know, the better prepared you are to decide who to hire. 

A final step in preparing to interview is to develop a rubric to assess the candidate’s response to each question. What would be an outstanding (top performer) response? What would be acceptable? Unacceptable?

Bonus offer for Briefly Noted readers: A telephone coaching session to strengthen your interview questions, at no cost to you. Email two interview questions to nmscott@telus.net. Then we’ll schedule a 15-minute coaching session to discuss ways to rewrite your question to ensure you have high-quality information to help you hire the right person.

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