5 of the Best Interview Questions and How to Evaluate Them
Interviews are essentially your only chance to learn about the candidate as a person, in a way that hasn’t been edited by friends and family. Resumes are still important, but a resume only tells you the person’s best experiences, and often times it goes through plenty of rounds of edits before it is sent over. In an interview, their responses are their own.
So that means you need to ask great questions and make sure you are evaluating the answers in a way that will help you identify the best candidate. The following are five popular interview questions that you can consider when you’re ready to start narrowing down applicants.
Interview Questions
- Where do you want to be in 5 years?
Five year plans used to be too common a question, and the canned answers were corny. But now they have become useful again, as many of the younger generation seem hip to telling employers that they have goals that are completely unrelated to the position. That tells you something about their loyalty and productivity, and so pay attention to those that actually indicate they want to grow with your company.
- …Can you show me?
In the interview, you’re going to ask about things specific to your workplace. In general, people can learn on the job. But every once in a while there is a talent that is absolutely crucial to a person’s employment, that they’ll need to do on day one. After you have asked the individual if they know the task, follow up by asking them if they can show you. You don’t even need to make them show you. You just need to ask and see their response.
- Tell me about a time you had a problematic customer.
If the applicant is going to work with customers, you want to get an idea of whether or not they see a customer as a nuisance or a priority, and how they handle difficult situations. This type of behavioral interview question handles that goal.
- Tell me about yourself.
This is perhaps the most common interview question out there, and yet it is still one of the most useful. That’s because it is a question that tells you two things about the applicant: what do they feel like highlighting about themselves and how prepared they are for the interview. Everyone “should” know that this question is coming, and so you want to see not only how they answer it, but whether or not they felt the need to prepare for the job interview.
- How many snakes are there in Australia?
You don’t need to literally ask this question, but you should ask at least one question that will throw someone off of their game. See what their mindset is and how they go about dealing with difficult questions. You can learn a lot about a person by how they answer tough questions that are not necessarily something they could prepare for.
BONUS: How About This Weather?
All interview questions are simply tools to help you learn more about an applicant. Something as simple as “how is the weather?” or “seen any good movies lately?” can tell you things like what the person values, if they’re prone to complaints, and so much more.
So it’s not necessarily about the questions you ask, but learning what answers you’re looking for and how to evaluate what you’re told. There are nuggets of information inside every interview answer.
