Top 10 Job Interview Questions To Ask Job Candidates
- Why These Questions?
- 1. Describe a time when your communication skills influenced the outcome of an event or situation.
- 2. Describe a time when you were part of a successful team or a team that successfully completed a team project. What was your part in the team?
- 3. Describe a time when your client was not satisfied with your work. How did you handle the situation?
- 4. Describe, in your opinion, the most difficult team you ever had to lead or manage in the past. What were the issues and how did you handle the team?
- 5. Describe a time when you went out of your way to find the root cause of a problem in order to fix it. What did you do, and how was it resolved?
- 6. Describe a time when you spotted a problem or opportunity before others. Did you act on what you discovered?
- 7. Describe a time when you helped your coworker with a task that you had more knowledge in than them.
- 8. Describe a time when you attended a seminar and managed to apply what you learned there at work.
- 9. Describe, if any, the specialized computer software you use at work. Describe a typical project or assignment that needs this software.
- 10. Describe a time when you intricately understood how business worked at the company you were in, and how that helped you improve the success of the company.
If you are looking for a quick top ten list of job interview questions, check out this list below. You probably can’t go wrong with asking these questions the next time you interview a job candidate.
Top ten general job interview questions to ask job candidates:
- Describe a time when your communication skills influenced the outcome of an event or situation.
- Describe a time when you were part of a successful team or a team that successfully completed a team project. What was your part in the team?
- Describe a time when your client was not satisfied with your work. How did you handle the situation?
- Describe, in your opinion, the most difficult team you ever had to lead or manage in the past. What were the issues and how did you handle the team?
- Describe a time when you went out of your way to find the root cause of a problem in order to fix it. What did you do, and how was it resolved?
- Describe a time when you spotted a problem or opportunity before others. Did you act on what you discovered?
- Describe a time when you helped your coworker with a task that you had more knowledge in than them.
- Describe a time when you attended a seminar and managed to apply what you learned there at work.
- Describe, if any, the specialized computer software you use at work. Describe a typical project or assignment that needs this software.
- Describe a time when you intricately understood how business worked at the company you were in, and how that helped you improve the success of the company.
Below, we have detailed more about each individual question, including the purpose of the question and what to look out for.
Why These Questions?
Before we dive into the questions themselves, we need to first understand why we are asking these questions and what makes them the top interview questions to ask.
To understand this, I need to take you back a few notches to the starting point of this story.
Recently, Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) published a report on what competencies are hiring managers looking for in a new hire. Based on an analysis of over 1,000 jobs and data from places like the US Census Bureau and US Department of Labor, this report ranked the top competencies by demand.
Thus, we can see what the top 10 in-demand competencies are:
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Sales and customer service
- Leadership
- Problem solving and complex thinking
- Perception and attentiveness
- Teaching
- Learning*
- Digital technology
- Business and economics
If you are just like any other hiring manager surveyed in this report, chances are, you will also want your new hires to have most or all of these competencies too. Therefore, you should be asking interview questions that test for or that will reveal these competencies in your interviewees.
So, instead of coming up with the list of questions yourself to test for these competencies, we got you covered here.
The 10 job interview questions in this article will cover the 10 in-demand competencies. Asking your interviewees these 10 questions will help to reveal if they have these 10 competencies.
These questions were selected as they were behavioral questions (considered by some as the gold standard in interview questions) that were broad enough to cover most workplaces but also specific enough to clearly examine that specific competency without interference by cross-testing for other competencies.
Note that you don’t necessarily have to use these 10 questions word for word. It’s the competencies that you are looking for behind them that count. If you find that a question is not working for you, you can replace it with another question from our interview question bank that tests for the same competency. With almost 2,000 job interview questions, you can keep looking till you find the questions that work for you.
1. Describe a time when your communication skills influenced the outcome of an event or situation.
This is a simple and general question to help judge an interviewee’s communication skill level.
Here you are looking to see if the interviewee’s communication skills, whether it be oral, verbal, input, or output, were sufficient to help them in the past. You can also roughly tell what the interviewee’s communication style is like and if it fits with the job.
See the full details of this question here.
This question is rather general as it does not specify whether the communication skill in question is relating to verbal or written communication, or relating to communication input or output (i.e. listening and reading vs speaking and writing). If you are looking for something more specific in your interviewees, you will need to find a correspondingly specific communication interview question.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for communication skills, take a look at communication related questions on our interview question bank.
2. Describe a time when you were part of a successful team or a team that successfully completed a team project. What was your part in the team?
A question like this works on the premise that if the interviewee has contributed much to a team’s success in the past, then they could do so again for your team. If the interviewee cannot come up with a specific example of themselves doing so, it is a red flag.
See the full details of this question here.
To be clear, this question is measuring ‘teamwork’ as opposed to the similarly named ‘team fit’. The former relates to how one can contribute to a team’s success, and the latter is how one forms relationships with team members. To test for the latter, you will need to find alternative questions that correspondingly ask about it.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for team related competencies, take a look at team related questions on our interview question bank.
3. Describe a time when your client was not satisfied with your work. How did you handle the situation?
This question asks about negative experiences. Realistically, someone with adequate experience in any area would have also come across a negative experience in their line of work.
In this case, an unhappy client is a chance for a staff member to showcase their customer service skills in calming the down and appeasing the client, and also their sales and influence skills in turning the situation around and maintaining the sale.
An interviewee who has done this in the past would thus demonstrate that they have skills in sales and customer service, and the opposite goes for one who was not.
See the full details of this question here.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for sales and customer service skills, take a look at sales and customer service related questions on our interview question bank.
4. Describe, in your opinion, the most difficult team you ever had to lead or manage in the past. What were the issues and how did you handle the team?
Instead of asking simply about leading in the past, this question takes it to the extreme by asking the hardest team the interviewee has led. The idea here is that if the interviewee has successfully led a team that was this hard to lead, then they have proven their leadership capabilities and subsequent teams will be easier to manage.
An example of an answer could be: “The most difficult team I have handled in the past was a group of fresh graduates who were idealistic. Aside from mentoring them, I had to open their eyes to the realities of the corporate world. It’s a matter of being transparent and clear when it comes to goal settings.”
See the full details of this question here.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for leadership skills, take a look at leadership related questions on our interview question bank.
5. Describe a time when you went out of your way to find the root cause of a problem in order to fix it. What did you do, and how was it resolved?
A simple question that explores the interviewee’s history of problem solving. If the interviewee has demonstrated problem solving skills and critical thinking in the past, they are likely to do it again. In this case, it’s also not just about the skill but the mentality and methodology of problem solving that you can look out for.
See the full details of this question here.
Do note that this question also ties in slightly with testing for initiative and continual improvement. It is not easy to separate these competencies from problem solving and critical thinking as there are some overlaps. However, various ‘purer’ questions on problem solving do exist.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for problem solving and critical thinking skills, take a look at problem solving and critical thinking related questions on our interview question bank.
6. Describe a time when you spotted a problem or opportunity before others. Did you act on what you discovered?
This general question explores if the interviewee has been attentive enough in the past to spot errors and mistakes or even just if they saw something from a different perspective. Be careful with answers as sometimes an interviewee spotting a mistake/opportunity could have just gotten lucky one time. It might be even better to ask for a few similar incidents of
See the full details of this question here.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for perception and attentiveness skills, take a look at perception and attentiveness related questions on our interview question bank.
7. Describe a time when you helped your coworker with a task that you had more knowledge in than them.
Although this question is about the competency of teaching, I refrained from using the word ‘teaching’ in the question itself. When presented with the scenario of a less knowledgeable co-worker, we want to test if the teaching ‘instinct’ naturally arises or whether the interviewee simply just does the work for their co-worker. It is a ‘teach a man to fish’ vs ‘give a man a fish’ type of scenario.
Once the teaching mentality is established, we can then try and figure out how well the interviewee teaches.
See the full details of this question here.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for teaching skills, take a look at teaching related questions on our interview question bank.
8. Describe a time when you attended a seminar and managed to apply what you learned there at work.
A simple question designed to not only measure if the interviewee can learn new skills, but also that they have been active in learning and that they can apply what they have learned.
A good follow-up question would be to ask what knowledge actually was gained at the seminar and how else this knowledge might have helped them.
Red flags to watch out for are if the candidate thinks they are above learning new things, or do not take the initiative to learn new things.
See the full details of this question here.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for learning skills, take a look at learning related questions on our interview question bank.
9. Describe, if any, the specialized computer software you use at work. Describe a typical project or assignment that needs this software.
Considering that every company and organization uses different computer systems and software, having a one size fits all question would be impossible. Getting an interviewee who has used all the computer systems that you require will also be impossible, or at least quite improbable. Therefore a more general question regarding computer systems would work better.
This question works by trying to see if any of the computer systems that the interviewee already knows matches with any that you have or use. It does not have to be an exact match, and similar enough computer systems should be good enough.
You can also ask follow up questions to see if the interviewee can easily pick up the computer systems that you have that they haven’t learnt before.
See the full details of this question here.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for digital technology knowledge and skills, take a look at digital technology related questions on our interview question bank. To be frank, the interview question bank does not have a lot of digital technology questions yet, so your best bet would be to try looking at other resources such as this article that I found.
10. Describe a time when you intricately understood how business worked at the company you were in, and how that helped you improve the success of the company.
Every company and industry is different, and a more industry-specific question could be used in place of this. However, without knowing the specifics, the next best is this general question which asks if the interviewee has exercised the knowledge and skill of business acumen in the past.
See the full details of this question here.
Business acumen is also a rather general topic with many specialty areas and sometimes considered more of an art than a science. Therefore, you should choose a more specific question that will fit your needs better.
To look for alternative questions that can also test for business and economics knowledge, take a look at business acumen related questions on our interview question bank. To be frank, the interview question bank does not have a lot of business acumen questions yet, so your best bet would be to try looking at other resources such as this article that I found.
Sources
- https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/workplace-competencies-employers-want/
- https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/competencies/
* The list of competencies was edited from the original “7. Teaching and Learning, 8. Vision and Hearing” to this article’s “7. Teaching, 8. Learning” instead. This was done as Vision and Hearing cannot be tested in an interview question, and teaching and learning are separate competencies in their own right.
