Best Job Interview Questions To Ask Candidates To Assess Talents And FIT
Recruiters and interviewers assess candidates for the demands of specific positions and team fit. This post gives recruiters and hiring teams the best interview questions to ask candidates during an interview. Try using these questions whether you use video interviews, phone interviews, or in-person interviews.
The job of the full life cycle recruiter (corporate or agency) is to:
- Recruit the right candidates
- Ask the candidates’ compensation requirements
- Ask interview questions to assess talents
- Ask interview questions evaluate organizational fit
The importance of the questions you ask can not be understated.
The first job interview question to ask candidates that we’ll discuss is how to evaluate team "fit" with the organizational culture.
- Here is the first “best job interview question to ask candidates" to measure FIT.
One of the best interview questions for recruiters to ask is actually a combination of two questions used together. Use this question combination to evaluate a candidate’s “FIT” for the team culture. This job interview question sequence gives the interviewer precise information about the team cultures where the candidate has worked and the type of cultural qualities that will be the most productive for each candidate.
“Describe yourself in 3 words”.
After hearing the 3 words the candidate uses to describe themselves ask the following follow-up job interview question:
“Pick one of the 3 words you used to describe you and give me an example that demonstrates this quality about you.”
The second “best job interview questions to ask candidates” to measure FIT is the following:
“Describe a company culture that feels the most productive for you”.
This question gives you detailed information about the team culture where the candidate has worked and the team cultures where the candidate felt the most productive.
Like the first question above, you can use this question whether you are interviewing via Zoom video interviews, phone interviews, digital interviews (Q&A), or in-person interviews.
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Best interview questions for hiring managers and interviewers to assess a candidate's talents are data collection questions that help you gather targeted data so you can make an evaluation. The best interview questions are actually the interviewer’s request for the candidate to tell the interviewer a structured story of their experience. These types of job interview questions are called BEI questions.
The best job interview questions for interviewers have two parts.
To see a video about this method click or go to Selecting Excellence
The first half of the best job interview questions begin with one of the following phrases:
- Give me an example…
- Describe a situation…
- Tell me about a time…
- Walk me through an example…
Starting interview questions with one of these phrases is a request for a structured story where the candidate tells you about their experiences. The most popular storytelling framework candidates use is the STAR format or STAR interviews. I’ll describe this in another blog post.
The second half of the “best job interview questions to ask in an interview” is the specific experience you want to focus on. For example, let’s say you want to learn about a candidate’s “project management” experience. In this example, “project management” is the second half of your questions.
Putting the two parts of your job interview question together, it might look like the following example:
“Give me an example of your project management experience?”
In this example, you can see the opening phrase followed by the focus area.
“Give me an example of your project management experience?”
Using this simple two-part formula, you now know how to create your best Interview questions to ask in an interview. You no longer need a list of pre-written job interview questions. You can confidently formulate your best questions to ask during an interview and hire great people consistently.
