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In a previous blog post, HRwisdom shared some HR horror stories about difficult employees, underperforming employees, and other staff management challenges.
HRwisdom recently asked one of its contributors, Robert Watson, what were his Top 10 Interview Questions to help him find the right person for the right role?
Robert Watson is a highly experienced management consultant and executive coach. Robert has literally travelled the world examining the recruitment and selection systems of some of the most successful companies in the world.
Here, we will take a look at Robert’s preferred interview questions for recruiting staff and some of his thinking behind the selection.
Before We Get Started . . .
The following are resources which may help you build the right team by selecting the right people for the right roles.
Click for more information:
- HRwisdom Library (see ‘Hiring a New Employee’ sub-section)
- Predict future performance of job candidates with this online candidate assessment tool (free report available)
- Job applicant tracking system to streamline your recruitment process
- HRwisdom ‘No Frills’ Staff Recruitment Pack
- Interview Questions (recommended by one of our subscribers – this is not an HRwisdom product)
Top 10 Interview Questions To Hire Good Staff
HRwisdom recently asked one of its contributors, Robert Watson, what were his Top 10 Interview Questions to help him hire good staff or, more specifically, the right person for the right role?
In the following notes taken directly from our discussion, we will take a look at Robert’s preferred interview questions for hiring good staff and some of his thinking behind the selection.
What is the thinking behind these questions?
“Over the years, I must have seen thousand of recruitment questions that people have designed. But the overwhelming majority of those are very simple questions where the candidate can answer simply yes or no, and then of course we complain about younger candidates who can’t string a sentence together.
Each of the questions that I’ve selected here require the candidate to actually put an answer together and, probably, a paragraph answer. They’re not just simply one-sentence answers. You’re trying to get some discussion going and when they start discussing these things, what you’re looking for in all of these questions is what’s underlying or what’s the attitude that the person has.
The attitude is something that’s internal to the candidate. So if they have the right attitude then you don’t have to spend a lot of time training them to try and correct their attitude. So I guess it’s fairly obvious to me and hopefully it’s convincing to you that the sort of candidate that you really want in your business is someone who already brings with them the attitudes which match what you want out of your employees.”
How do these questions fit into the overall structure of the interview?
“Most candidates coming along are going to be nervous so you need to start out with a question that is non-threatening and allows them to talk a little bit about them in their territory.
So a typical question like the “Tell us about the current job that you have and the products that you make, and the company”, and just allow them to talk for two to three minutes.
The answers that they give may reveal some of their attitudes towards management or customers or suppliers. Those attitudes might be positive attitudes or they might be negative attitudes. But by and large that opening question is just designed to put them at ease.
Then you’ll move in to the technical questions where you ask them about specific software of specific machinery or specific experience that they’ve had. You may have asked the sales person, for instance, to bring along examples of sales presentations they’ve done or graphs showing improved sales or something like that. So you spend as much time as you like on the technical side.
The top ten questions that I’ve put here are ones which reveal more about the underlying attitude that the person has in their behavior.
Pick out some of those that you think are particularly relevant to the role that you want this person to fulfill and add those into the interview.
You can design up your own questions if you like. If you do that, you will need to make sure that the answers that people give you are not yes and no answers. They will need to be answers where people speak for a while.”
Robert’s Top 10 Interview Questions
- Tell us about the previous job that you had, and how you fitted in with the business
- How did you know how well the business was going?
- Describe a time when you worked on a team. What were some of the difficulties that this team had?
- We all make mistakes. Tell us about a time when you made a mistake – what did you do about it and what did you learn from that?
- Tell us about some training you’ve done recently.
- Have you ever lost your job and, if so, what did you learn from that experience?
- Tell us about a time you had to break a safety rule. What were the circumstances, and the consequences and what would you do differently next time?
- Customers can be very demanding. Tell us about a time when you went the extra mile to satisfy a customer.
- Tell us about a time when a customer’s deadline couldn’t be met. How did you break the news to the customer?
- Why do you want to work in our business?
Are these Top 10 Questions Enough?
“These top ten questions are very effective. However, you’ll probably realise that an interview can’t be made up of just these top ten questions.
So, don’t forget that in a typical interview, what you’ll need is a couple of opening questions that relax the candidate and the most obvious opening question is “Tell us about your current job.” That’s always a good one.
You will also need to ask your technical questions because for most jobs, you want to know if they do have the experience or the particular qualification that you’re after and then these top ten questions, you need to handpick the ones of those that are relevant to the job vacancy that you have and use questions like those.
If you go and design up your own question, always test them out on someone, perhaps an existing employee and see what sort of answers they will give. If they give you a paragraph-type answer then you’ll know that’s a fairly good question. If they give you a one-word answer, you’ll know that your question needs to redesigned.”
If you’d like Robert’s contact details, just email: support@HRwisdom.com.au
Next Step . . .
The following are resources which may help you build the right team by selecting the right people for the right roles.
- Predict future performance of job candidates with this online candidate assessment tool (free report available)
- HRwisdom Library (see ‘Hiring a New Employee’ sub-section)
- Job applicant tracking system to streamline your recruitment process
- HRwisdom ‘No Frills’ Staff Recruitment Pack
- Interview Questions (recommended by one of our subscribers – this is not an HRwisdom product)
HRwisdom Support
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