5 Interview Strategies To Implement Today

1. Ask about specific examples.

Judge people on what they did, not their self-assessed strengths. Gather insights by asking about the steps they took, their thought process, how they did the work, their learnings, and how they talk about the people or customers they worked with.

✅ THIS: Tell me about the most complex project that you managed.

❌ NOT: Can you do project management? Are you detail oriented?

By asking about real past experience, you reward doers over talkers.

Example follow up questions to dig in:

• Who did you work with? Tell me about their strengths and weaknesses.
• How did you keep people on track? What strategies and tools did you use?
• What were the goals and final results of the project?
• Did you hit any stumbling blocks? How did you overcome them?
• What lessons did you learn? Have you been able to apply them to any other projects?

2. Use skills-based questions or assessments.

Everyone wants to fairly and accurately evaluate someone’s skills but unless you know how to, you default to measuring someone’s confidence about said skills.

By getting these questions right, you’ll reward folks who are highly skilled but humble or self-deprecating and filter out folks who overestimate their abilities or talk eloquently but lack execution.

✅ THIS: Create and save a draft email in this demo account.

✅ THIS: Walk me through the basic steps you’d take to send an email.

❌ NOT: Do you know how to send emails? Have you sent emails before?

Predefine your assessment criteria and then rate the candidate’s competency. And, of course, focus on a skill that’s key to the role.

Example key actions to score:

• Pull a list of contacts
• Implement email design best practices
• Test email formatting in various email clients
• Strategize on a call-to-action
• Measure results

Examples of other skill-based activities:

• Whiteboard or code exercises for developers
• Create a financial model, pivot table, or other spreadsheet
• Write an email to an upset customer
• Make website recommendations to improve SEO or sales conversions
• Design a strategic plan for a real company issue

3. Go for superlative.

Asking about the most, least, greatest, proudest, hardest will get the best from a candidate. As the interviewer, you can be assured that you’re comparing one candidate’s best to another candidate’s best.

🙂 GOOD: Tell me about a project that you worked on.

😁 BETTER: Tell me about a complex project that you worked on.

🥳 BEST: Tell me about the most complex project you worked on.

If you ask a generic question about “a project” instead of “the most important project,” you won’t know if their underwhelming answer is because of their lackluster experience or your lackluster question.

What’s a question the most meaningful question you could ask? (See what I did there? 😉)

4. Keep questions consistent.

Ask the same interview questions at the same stages across all candidates for the most fair and insightful interview process.

When I first started interviewing and hiring, I thought asking a variety of interview questions was a strength. Foolish Young Kathryn could flip through her mental interview question database and ask according to her daily whim.

Unfortunately, this was a terrible idea!!

Asking different questions, while interesting to the interviewer, means that you’re comparing different data across candidates. You could unintentionally ask one candidate easier or harder questions. Keep it apples to apples to make it fair and unbiased.

Bonus: you only have to remember a handful of questions instead of hundreds like Foolish Young Kathryn!

5. Listen.

Give lots of time for a candidate to answer. Don’t jump in with the next question. Pause an extra moment to see if they have more to share.

What people share in the quiet moments can be really important.

Another strategy is to keep track of how much each person speaks. The candidate should be speaking the most (unless you’re answering their questions).

Listen deeply to what they say, how they say it, and what isn’t said.

Great Questions Lead To Great Talent

When you ask the right questions and listen well, you will easily identify top talent and win them over. The experience feels fair, their expertise and abilities shine, and you can move forward quickly and confidently.

The right interview questions are a great start to a long relationship with your company!