Top 20 Interesting Job Interview Questions You Should Ask Candidates

There will come a time when your company will be hiring and when that happens, it may be you running the interview.

It’s a big responsibility. The job interview questions you should ask are important for a number of reasons. One reason being that the corporate culture is in your hands and it’s up to you to maintain the office. Perhaps I’m being dramatic. Still, there are some inherent attributes that you’ll want in your perfect candidate. So you need to know how to extract that information from he or she being interviewed.

Whenever I’m going for an interview, for some reason I think of one question that I read on a click-bait article whilst scrolling Facebook. The person in the article was going for an interview at Apple in San Francisco, with hopes of being a developer.

With Apple being notorious for difficult non-traditional questioning, the question he was asked appeared to come from left-field.

“How would you make a phone fly?”

He answered, “I’d take it on a plane”. Apparently he got the job, incredible.

So when it comes to the ideal job interview questions you should ask, you should be thinking about a few key areas. Maybe not as abstract as Apple’s, but you should still know what it is that you want from the best possible candidate to fill the position. Apple knew this and so should you.

There are potentially thousands of areas you should be delving into, but you only have an hour or so for the interview. So let’s have a look at what we are some of the more important areas of questioning, along with some questions relating to them.

Related article: Six Stages to Success with the Employee Lifecycle

Work-related general questions

These questions are fairly straight forward, but important nonetheless. These can be quickly answered and a lot of the time, give the interviewer an idea of how they think of themselves in relation to the role.

Questions such as “Why did you choose the degree/career path/training that you did?” allows you to get personal while staying focused on work. Often letting the interviewer understand more about the candidate’s motivations and goals.

Job Interview Questions You Should Ask

• Why should we hire you?
• Why did you choose the degree/career path/training that you did?
• What do you know about our company?
• What do you hope to gain from a new role with us?
• What questions do you have for us?

Company culture

Company culture is something that needs to be assessed before the hiring process. To get the ideal employees, you must know exactly what it is that you want in terms of the dynamics of the company. This can only come from the culture.

Related article: How to Create a Positive Company Culture in 11 Easy Steps

There’s no magic formula for a great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated.

– Richard Branson –

Job Interview Questions You Should Ask

• What’s something you’d be happy doing every day for the rest of your career?
• What do you believe would be the ideal working environment for you?
• How would you deal with something that bothered you, be it a colleague, boss or task?
• If a client or a supervisor asked you for something outside of the scope of your job description, training or otherwise, how would you handle it?
• How would you describe corporate culture?

 

 

Personal attributes

The reasoning for a few more personal questions is simple. To gain an insight into who the person is, outside of the professional sphere. Asking about the way they deal with stress, people they’d love to meet or even about their pets are all questions that allow you as the interviewer to understand the candidate on a different level.

You’ll find that your candidates will answer these questions more enthusiastically and quicker than some of the harder questions.

Sure, these questions can also allow you to assess their cultural fit into the office, but often they can just be to get a better understanding of your candidate.

Job Interview Questions You Should Ask

• What motivates you?
• How do you deal with stress/how do you express it?
• Name a person, alive or dead, that you would want to meet and why?
• Are you a dog or cat person?
• What are your hobbies?

Experience

This is obviously an important set of questions to ask. Without doubt, you need a person who has the skills and experience to do your posted job. Although it’s likely you’ve culled some of the candidates already purely from their applications. You need to make sure that the person who’s made it to the interview stage actually has what it takes.

You want to hear about their past experience, their team working abilities, the way they deal with situations and for them to be honest about it all. All the while, making sure the candidate has as many of the necessary attributes as possible. Still, you want to be able to train them into your company process, so not having all of the desired skillset isn’t always a bad thing.

Job Interview Questions You Should Ask

• Tell me about a time you screwed up and what you did about it.
• Have you ever dealt with someone with an ego in any of your previous roles?
• You got the job and we’ve given you a task that you’re solely in charge of and you have to decide on how to spend the budget and establish the strategy. Tell us where you’d start and how it would be completed.
• When I contact your references and last supervisor, what would they say about you?
• If we hire you, how do you feel you’ll help grow the company?

In Summary

These are just a few of the job interview questions you should ask when interviewing a potential candidate. Mostly because you want them to seamlessly fit into the well-oiled machine that is your company.

You want the best possible person for the job, whilst creating a company culture that your competitors would kill to have and that professionals would kill to be a part of. But this doesn’t happen overnight. No matter how much we wish it would.

Culture can be many things. A seating arrangement, dress codes, work banter or any number of other things. Regardless of the definition, you want it and it all starts with the hiring process.

So for your next interview, make sure you try to touch on areas such as their experience, personal attributes, your company culture and any other general work related questions. If you do, you can be sure to hire the best candidate for your specific company.