Sample Interviewing Questions

Then and only then, you are ready to formulate your job interviewing questions – for a detailed description of each one of these preceding steps, please take a look at our job interviewing techniques section.

Your sample interviewing questions must include only useful questions. You only have a couple of hours during the job interview to find out if this candidate is or is not the person you are looking for: Time is precious – don’t waste it with useless questions.

Effective interviewing questions have the following four characteristics:

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First: Your sample interviewing questions must be directly related to the position through:

Second: Your sample interviewing questions must be formulated in a way that allows you to sequentially find out about:

Note: For a detailed discussion about this interviewing questions sequence, take a look at our job interviewing techniques section – specifically the third step titled: Interviewing Questions.

Third: Your sample interviewing questions must help you to accurately find out about whether or not the candidate has the soft skills required for the job.

To exemplify this, let’s do a little exercise:

You have two candidates applying for the same position. One of them has all the right hard skills, but none of the soft skills required for the job. The other candidate has all the right soft skills, but none of the hard skills required for the job.

Assuming that the learning curve allowed for this position is six months, which candidate would you hire?

I have asked this very same question to literally hundreds of managers, and invariably all of them have given me the very same answer: They all would hire the candidate with the right soft skills.

Why? Because you can teach hard skills to just about anyone, but it is very difficult to teach a soft skill.

You can train a new employee – an engineer for example – to become black belt in Six Sigma, but how do you teach someone about integrity?

Fourth: Your sample interviewing questions must not be useless questions.

There are two types of useless questions: Guiding questions and hypothetical questions.

Guiding questions is when you literally put the answer in the candidate’s mouth. For example: “I am sure you know about …, don’t you?”

Hypothetical questions is when you ask the candidate what she would do in a hypothetical situation. For example: “What would you do if …?”

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These four guidelines – together with our job interviewing techniques section – will help you craft interviewing questions that will get you the best of the right candidate.

To keep on learning about leadership skills, go back to the previous page (or click here ), and continue reading in a sequential order.

If you would like your managers to learn out about crafting effective sample interviewing questions through our speaking or consulting services, please click on this link.