What’s Your Favorite Job Interview Question?

After scrutinizing countless resumes, cover letters, and applications, you’ve finally selected a handful of the top job candidates to join you for a job interview. Since this is the first opportunity to meet with a job candidate face-to-face, it’s kind of a make or break moment in the hiring process.

As an interviewer, you need to come to the job interview prepared. This isn’t one of those situations where you can fly by the seat of your pants. You’ll need to review resumes, research job candidates, and prepare thoughtful interview questions. Which brings up a good question: what’s your favorite job interview question?

What Questions Will Job Seekers Ask During The Job Interview?

Job candidates prepare for a wide variety of job interview questions. It’s almost guaranteed that they’ll have canned answers for some of the basic questions like what’s your greatest strength and weakness? During the job interview it’s your responsibility to dive deep and really get to know the job candidate. The best way to do this is to be friendly and ask open-ended, telling questions.

There’s an endless list of potential job interview questions. We rounded up a few ideas that might become your favorite job interview question, including:

What would you add to your resume?
What makes you weird?
Tell me your story.
What’s your spirit animal?
What do people who don’t like you say about you?
Tell me what you did between jobs.
What do you want to achieve while working here?
What do you like to do and what do you not like to do?
Who is your role model? Why?
What else should we know about you?
If you don’t get this job, what will you do?
What motivates you?
Why did you leave your last job?
Is there anything in your career that you would have done differently?
What makes you happy?

All of these questions require more than just a “yes” or “no” response. To really get to know a candidate, you need to ask questions that spark conversation and shine the spotlight on a candidate’s personality, work ethic, thought processes, perspectives, adaptability, teamwork, culture fit, ability to do the job, and so much more. When you ask a job interview question that gets a candidate talking, it’s easier to get to know them and see what they are really like. This is the key to avoiding bad hires!

17 Creative Ways To Recruit Employees

As always keep your questions on point so that you avoid any illegal interview questions. One good tactic is to create a list of acceptable questions that has been approved by your legal team. This will help you stay consistent and hopefully eliminate bias in the hiring process.

One sneaky (and fun) trick is to throw in a totally off-the-wall job interview question. Find out why asking tricky job interview questions might be a good idea in your next interview.

Now go and brainstorm a list of potential questions. Test them out in your next interview. You might just find that you have a new favorite job interview question.

See Also: