3 Interview Questions Every Job Candidate Should Answer
It can be difficult to find the perfect candidate to fill a position within your company. Many times, people are great at interviewing and cannot seem to follow through on the actual job. Most interviews consist of questions regarding the candidate as well as their past experience. John Younger, CEO of Accolo, has had a lot of experience interviewing thousands of different people. He offers a new approach to interviewing job candidates that is effective and allows you to get to know the candidate on a business level more in-depth.
After finding out about your candidate’s job history, work your way through each job with the following questions.
- How did you find out about the job?
- What did you like about the job before you started?
- Why did you leave?
Younger states, “What’s amazing is that after a few minutes you will have learned something about the candidate, whether positive or negative, that you would haven ever learned about otherwise.”
So, what are the key facts that you can take away from those three questions?
The majority of people that you will run into will find their first couple of real jobs through job postings, job fairs, or online listings. This is a completely normal and common way to get yourself hired…at first. If your candidate has solely found their jobs through job postings, chances are they are just looking for any job to make them money, and are not truly invested in your company. It is vital, when hiring, to find someone who is passionate enough to always do what is best for your company. Younger adds that, “…by the time you get to Job three, four or five in your career and you haven’t been pulled into a job by someone you previously worked for, that’s a red flag.” Why? Because that shows that you did not invest your time during the job building relationships or developing trust.
When asking a candidate what they liked about the job before they started, you may run into answers such as “It was a great opportunity…” or, “It was a great chance for me to learn more about the company…” Here is how you differentiate a good employee from a great one. A good employee does what they are told and works hard. A great employee genuinely appreciates their work environment and enjoys what they do, which can easily be seen through their hard work. A great employee will know what kind of environment they will do best in, they know what motivates them and they know how to actively seek those things when looking for a new place to work.
It is absolutely vital to ask each candidate why they left their old jobs. There are many reasons why an employee could leave a company, whether it has to do with money, a better opportunity, or problems with their bosses or co-workers. Make sure that regardless of how the candidate responds, you are not judgmental. This will allow for the candidate to be more open and share information that they otherwise would not have brought up. Younger says, “Finding out why a person left previous jobs can be a quick way to get to the heart of that person’s sense of teamwork and responsibility. Some people never take ownership and see every problem as someone else’s problem. And some candidates have consistently had problems with their bosses…which means they’ll also have issues with you.”
Overall, stick to these three questions during an interview to be able to truly get to the heart of the candidate and find out what type of worker they are and how they could or could not fit into your company.
