Are you stuck for questions to ask at interview? I’ve just collated a list for a business partner and it seemed to make sense to share these on my blog. Carefully selected questions can give you an insight into a candidates attitude towards work. Although asking difficult question shouldn’t be avoided, making the interviewee defensive will make the process harder.
Interview Question Ideas
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Run me through the main points on your CV that I should be aware of.
3. What would your friends and colleagues say about you?
4. Why are you taking a risk and leaving your other job?
5. What drives you each day to get out of bed?
6. Tell me about your main strengths.
7. Can you give me a situation that these strengths have helped you?
8. What don’t you enjoy working on?
9. When have these held you back?
10. Why should we give you the job?
11. If you have to learn a new skill for this job how would you view it?
12. Give me an example a work problem and how you solved it.
13. What is the hardest thing you had to do at work?
14. What do you know about this company?
15. And why do you work to for us?
16. What type of management style do you respond best to?
17. What do you find most attractive about this jobs?
18. What seems least attractive about this job?
19. What attracts you to a job?
20. What is this job role all about and what do you think you’ll be delivering?
21. How long do you see yourself at this company?
22. How you manage people?
23. Have you considering other ways of management?
24. What do you think makes a good manager?
25. What attributes do you look for in people you are recruiting?
26. Have you ever had to sack(fire) somebody, how did it go, what would you do differently?
27. Why are you leaving your current employer?
28. Tell me about a situation you have been in beyond your ability and explain how your resolved it.
29. Do you think you have reached your full potential?
30. What is your opinion on personal training and development?
31. What do you admire in your current boss?
32. What do you find difficult when dealing with your current boss?
33. What do you feel this position should pay?
34. What are your long term goals?
35. How do you plan to achieve those goals?
36. Are you happy with your career progression so far?
37. Tell me something about yourself that is relevant to your application that isn’t on your CV.
38. Are you willing to travel for work?
39. What are your current responsibilities?
40. What major challenges and problems did you face? How did you handle them?
41. Which was most / least rewarding part of your last job?
42. What was the biggest success/ failure in this position?
43. How do you feel about performance related pay?
44. Why are you leaving your job?
45. Why were you sacked?
46. If I asked your friends why to hire you, what would the say?
47. Do you prefer to work independently or on a team?
48. Tell about a example of you working well in a team.
49. What type of work environment do you prefer?
50. Describe a difficult work situation / project and how you overcame it.
51. How do you evaluate success?
52. What do you find interesting about this job?
53. Why do you want this position?
54. What experience have you got that is applicable?
55. Why should we give you the job?
56. What do you know about this company?
57. What would working at this company suit you?
58. Do challenges excite or scare you?
59. What challenges can you see in this position?
60. Explain a situation that you demonstrated being able to work with little guidance.
61. What makes you tick out of work?
62. Do you have any questions about the role that I have not covered?
63. What salary do you require?
64. Who are our main competitors?
65. Which ones do you think we can learn from?
66. What important trends do you see in our industry?
67. What websites do you visit and why?
68. Who are the voices or personalities in our industry?
Post Interview: Questions To Ask Yourself
1. Are they smart enough for the job?
2. Will they do the job better than I would do it?
3. What is their attitude?
4. Are they keen to learn new skills?
5. Can you see yourself getting on with them (imagine an informal setting for a realistic view)
6. Are they a short term fix or long term asset?
7. How will the rest of the team respond to them?
8. What is their motivation for taking the job?
9. What was my gut feeling towards them?
Good luck with your interviewing and remember you can train new skills but it is really hard to change attitude.
