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Interviews form an integral part of the recruitment and selection process. They provide managers with the opportunity to assess candidates’ suitability for the role, team and organization, and allow them to demonstrate their skills, strengths and experience. The effectiveness of an interview, and its potential to reliably inform your selection decision, depends largely on the way you lead the conversation, and the types of questions you ask. Here we highlight the key dos and don’ts for asking effective interview questions.
Do Use Open Questions When Possible
These usually begin with ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘why’, or ‘how’ and cannot typically be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (e.g. ‘How do you manage your time at work?’) Open questions encourage candidates to provide comprehensive and insightful answers during the interview. Closed questions, by contrast, tend to solicit shorter answers and can be a useful way of checking facts (e.g. ‘What is your notice period?’).
Do Ask Probing Questions
These can be used to prompt candidates to provide further details when required (e.g. ‘Can you give me an example of that?’, ‘Can you be more specific?’). It can also be helpful to ask probing questions after a candidate has responded to a particularly challenging question, such as ‘Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which you were unable to cope?’ Asking a follow-up question such as ‘What do you do differently now?’ gives the candidate the opportunity to focus on the positive aspects of the situation by explaining what they learned and how they have improve
Do Make Sure Your Questions Are Relevant
Your questions should be appropriate to the skills and competencies required for the position (these should be outlined in the job description or person specification for the role). Depending on the position, relevant questions could include ‘What experience have you had of using Microsoft PowerPoint?’, ‘When did you last negotiate successfully?’, or ‘How do you manage relationships with clients?’
Do Use Competency-Based (Behavioral) Questions
These types of questions encourage candidates to give you specific examples of past behavior and performance, and should be relevant to the behaviors required in the role. Examples of behavioral questions include: ‘Tell me about a time when you were responsible for a group of people’ and ‘Can you give an example of a time when you were under pressure?’
Do Summarize and Confirm Your Understanding
To help ensure you have interpreted a candidate’s answer correctly, it is a good idea to reflect on the key points of their response and ask them to confirm whether these are correct (e.g. ‘So you were responsible for overseeing the smooth running of the project. Is that right?’)
Do Allow the Discussion to Have a Natural Flow
After the first few minutes, the interview should have the pace and tone of a workplace conversation between you and the candidate. However, you should still adhere to your planned sequence of questions to ensure the discussion continues to have a logical structure. As the interviewer, you should lead the conversation, but not dominate it. It is important to listen more than you talk, and to allow candidates the chance to provide comprehensive answers to your questions.
Do Manage Time Effectively During the Interview
It is important to ensure that all the important points are covered without running over the allotted timeframe. If a candidate’s answer starts to go off track, prompt them to get to the crux of the matter by asking questions such as ‘And then?’ and ‘What happened next?' It can also be helpful to encourage candidates to return to a particularly relevant aspect of their answer (e.g. ‘I was very interested in what you said earlier about creating a new database; could you tell me more about that?’)
Do Give Candidates the Opportunity to Ask Questions
This can be an effective way to close the interview, and provides candidates with the opportunity to find out more about the role, organization, or selection process. The questions candidates ask can often be quite revealing in terms of their motivations and understanding of the role and organization, so this final aspect of the interview can provide useful insight to managers, as well as candidates.
Don’t Use Leading Questions
These could prompt candidates to provide inaccurate or untruthful answers. For example, saying ‘Do you enjoy working as part of a team?’ is likely to encourage the other person to simply say ‘Yes’. A more appropriate way to frame the question in an interview would be to ask ‘How do you like to work?’ or ‘How do you feel about working in a team?’
Don’t Ask Several Questions at Once
This can be confusing for candidates, and they may only be able to provide you with a partial answer. Instead, you should ask one question at a time, and allow candidates a suitable amount of time to answer each fully.
Don’t Use Abbreviations, Terminology or Jargon
Again, this may prove confusing or off-putting to candidates, particularly if the language you use is specific to your organization. If you do have to use terminology it is important to explain clearly what you mean, e.g. ‘You would be responsible for checking those figures on Sage – that’s our accounting and payroll system’.
Don’t Lose Focus
It can be disheartening for candidates to feel as though you are not listening to them or you’re not that interested in their responses. Not only could this affect their performance, it could also lead them to question the credibility of the interview process. Demonstrate that you are listening to candidates’ responses throughout by maintaining eye contact with them, nodding at appropriate intervals and asking pertinent follow-up questions.
Don’t Ask Discriminatory Questions
The purpose of an interview is to obtain an assessment of whether a candidate is suitable for a role, and you should only ask questions that will help you to establish this. Questions relating to age, gender, disability, religious beliefs or family circumstances can all be considered as discriminatory and must be avoided. Examples of discriminatory interview questions might include ‘Are you planning to have more children?’ or ‘When do you plan to retire?’
