13/02/2024
One thing we see hiring teams really struggle with is what actual questions to ask in an interview.
Questions we’ve had in our training sessions include:
- How do I figure out what questions I should be asking?
- What questions do I ask to understand if a candidate can do a job?
- How can I tell if a candidate is being honest in their answers?
- How can I tell if a candidate is just telling me what I want to hear?
These are all totally valid questions and it underlines how few hiring teams really understand what they’re trying to achieve.
There’s also confusion on what sort of questions to ask, we often hear about behavioural interviews, which are used to assess how candidates have behaved in previous work situations. These have the risk of being tailored, vague or even false.
Situational questions probe more into real-life work situations and can better uncover how a candidate thinks about the problems they face in their role. These are used to understand how a candidate would respond to work-related scenarios. The benefit being of course, that you can use real-life scenarios that are specific to the team or unit you're hiring for.
Behavioural questions might be:
* Have you ever been given a task that you are not familiar with? How did you approach it?
* Tell me about a time you have increased productivity in your team.
Situational questions are different and could be:
* You have a member of your team who is underperforming. Talk me through how you would plan to address this.
* We’re looking to implement X product next year - talk me through how would you approach the planning and implementation phase.
* One of your peers who leads another team has had a family bereavement and is going to be away for two weeks, you’ve been asked to oversee her team for that period, whilst continuing to lead yours. Take me through the steps you would take to make sure things continue to run smoothly.
There’s clearly a difference in the two approaches, personally, I’d err towards the situational approach every time but as long as questions tie into what you’re assessing then it’s down to the individual.
Do you have a preference for the two approaches, which one has given you more insight into how someone approaches problems?
If you haven’t already, try this approach with your next interview, let me know how it goes.