As an interviewer, what is your favorite interview question?

Great ideas here, although I'm concerned that Greg's question risks yielding false negatives and positives. In sales candidates, I'm particularly interested in discovering communication and persuasive skills. It's hard to identify the presence of those skills when I've demanded an answer be constrained to one-word sound bites. On the other hand, I never argue with success. If it works, keep doing it.

I like Craig's question about the last book read, and have used that one (and similar) before. The answer yields much insight about how a person thinks, and his or her character. Case in point: I asked one senior manager, "Who is a leader, past or present, who has inspired you, and why?" Amazingly, she drew a blank, and could not answer the question (true story). End of interview.

One question I like for interviewing sales candidates, "How does the world look through your customer or prospect's eyes? is not easy to answer. But it reveals the degree of empathy a candidate has, and how perceptive they are to the major forces and issues (both personal and business) that people contend with every day.

My all time favorite: "What's the one question that you are surprised I did not ask or hoped that I would not ask?"

Here are two suggestions.

"Why would I be crazy not to hire you?" I've never seen a candidate who didn't smile at this question. That smile gives them the confidence they need to answer openly and honestly.

"What are you better at doing than 98% of the population?" Everyone has an answer to this. it's kind of "know thyself" question. It can be anything: growing roses, or playing the piano. I'm looking for people who know their strengths, not for people who don't or who think that deflecting the question with false modesty will impress me.

Favorite question: If you were the Hiring Manager for this position, what are the top three skills and attributes you'd be looking for in a candidate?

Why: It helps me understand how they view the position and what their priorities would most likely be.

-ellen o'brien
http://azureleaf.com
ellen@azureleaf.com

If you won a great deal of money in a lottery, with the condition you give half of it away, what charity or cause would benefit?

Titus, I don't question that asking this provides benefits for you, but from a candidate's point of view, I would not like this question. I have two concerns:

1) What happens to trust? Consider for a moment that a candidate nailed this question, and you hired him or her. Later, the candidate discovered that, in fact, the way you framed the question was not accurate, and that it was a set up to see how he or she would respond. How would they feel?

2) Interviews themselves are stressful. I do not think that adding more stress in this fashion would be any more revealing of a candidate's behavior than considering how they handle themselves throughout the entire interview process.

I believe the cream can rise to the top without this question.

The one I tend to ask is : Where do you see yourself in 3 yrs time? and then I ask them : If I asked you the same questions 3 yrs ago, what would you say ?

My all time favourite is 'How whould your boss describe you in one word? (get the answer) How would your best friend describe you in one word? (get the answer) and how would you describe yourself in one word?'. If you get the same word 3 times end the interview. If they can't do it in one word I wouldn't recruit them either. If you get three different words it helps to give a rounded picture of the candidate. And you can decide yourself what words you want to see in there. Personally I want to see Creative, Reliable, Ambitious or similar in pretty much that order.

I like to base an interview on behavioral based questions. You know, look at what they have done to determine how they will perform in the future. However, I like to ask them to tell me what they know about my company as it is today. First, it will tell me if they have a clue of who we are. If they bring up the paper business, I know they didn't put any effort into the interview as we sold that Division years ago. In addition, it would tell me what research they did prior to the interview. Do they care enough about this position to learn about the company that will be paying them?

I prefer to throw the candidate on the defensive because most apt job seekers have prepared too much to catch them off guard. It almost scripted, they know you will ask why they deserve the job, about your company and even those one word answer questions. The best employee is the one who doesn't lose their cool in tough situations and yet they are able to come out fighting. So , I like to 'ask', "You seem competent and I would have liked to hire you but you don't measure up to the other interviewees. Should I change my mind, you got one 1 minute?"

Somewhere towards the end of the interview I like to ask, "Why should I hire you." It gives the candidate one last chance to sell themselves to me. If they don't know why I should hire them then I certainly don't know either.

"What question have I not ask, the answer to which you would like me to know?"

This is great! And, so likely to be true these days!!

I too like behavioral based questions and Greg's descriptions, although I don't use the one word formula but do find it's a way to have a candidate think about real life as opposed to, "Describe your management style." Along these lines I ask candidates to "Tell me about your best boss and employee." I am looking for specifics and steer clear of someone who only whines about bosses or staff. For anyone who would be in a customer facing role I want to know about a best customer service experience either on the giving or receiving ends. Effective service professions know what it feels like to receive good service even if it is with morning coffee. A red flag is anyone who only describes problem customers or complaints.

Gone are the days of asking a candidate their biggest strength and biggest weakness. There are so many interview rodeo's one can attend to learn generic answers to these old school questions.

One that I love to use is this

" Can you please tell me about the last time you had to LIE at work?"

This can open up a conversation unlike any other.

Another unique one to try is

"Can you think of a colleague from your last job that we could call right now to ask some questions about your work ethic?"

Can you tell me what your most significant accomplishment was in the last 5 years?

I want to see if they use a professional example or a personal example.

Andrew Kordek
Co-Founder, Trendline Interactive
A Cross-Channel Messaging Agency
Twitter: @andrewkordek & @trendlinei
Email: andrew@trendlineinteractive.com

If we offer you a job, when can you start?

My preferred form of interviewing is using Behavioral Based questions as well. But before selecting them, and there are a million of them on line and in books, I select, with the hiring manager the traits they are looking for in the job and the team. Usually selecting 4-6 traits, I then look for questions that I will ask, as well as have the hiring manager (or interview team) select questions regarding the traits. That way when we all come back together to review our results we are comparing apples to apples - and all candidates at each level of the interviewing process are asked the same questions, to maintain objectivity and remove - as much as is humanly possible - the bias of the interviewer. My screening interview might contain a few of the traits that are key, rather than all of the traits. When the candidate progresses to the next level, there will be more in-depth questions on all the traits. I have the hiring manager/team rank each candidate on each question - which is more subjective, but when done with each question, there is typically balance demonstrated by the team for responses to the trait based behavioral questions. No one should fail based on one question, in my experience; rather they perform above or below the job requirements based on the summary of questions answered.

Melanie makes a good suggestion, "I select, with the hiring manager the traits they are looking for in the job and the team." We go further by identifying the top performing employees' strength of 20 job related traits. Since we ask over 300 questions it is almost impossible to ask that many questions in a face to face interview and record the answers and then compare the answers in a meaningful way which is why the questions are asked and answered on the Internet. It is quite amazing what is learned by asking so many questions that are answered in about 60 minutes.

At the end of the interview. What did we not ask about that we should have? I've had interviews go on for an extra half hour after that one and have all of the information after that question outweigh everything from before. There is something they are often dying to tell us - this helps get it out.

I believe that past behaviors are a fairly reliable indicator of future behaviors, so my questions revolve around specific examples from the person's life. For example, describe a time that you made a serious mistake, and how did you resolve it? Or, "During a performance review, in which areas have you been told that you needed to improve?"

I also like to hear of examples where the person took a stand against the majority. Finally, I ask questions of a pseudo-technical nature (I interview for engineering positions) to gauge the critical-thinking processes of the person. For instance, I might ask a question like "How long would it take you to walk across the United States?" The person I am looking for breaks that question down into pieces, makes some estimates, possibly offers up some caveats, and gives an answer. The person I am not looking for just guesses.

Since there are so many facets to a person, often, interesting information never gets included on a resume. So I like to ask: What would you like me to know about you that doesn't appear anywhere on your resume?

I like to challenge interviewees to explain what they are the most passionate about in their careers and how they see that being a fit in the position they are interviewing for. My favorite question is:

"What one accomplishment over the last five years of your career best exemplifies for your passion for this kind of work, and why?"

It's been my experience that you can tell immediately from a response to this question if the person is just interviewing for another "job" or they are really fired up about being part of the company's vision and future. It also gives the interviewee a chance to explain how they have mastered the skills needed.

What I also like about this question is that just as soon as someone starts talking about what they are truly passionate about, you get to see who they really are. The mask drops and the real person comes out. If that doesn't happen, I know they just want another job, will most likely just go through the motions, and not treat the position as a passion instead of just another step in their career.

What makes you think you would make a great (position description)?

Shannon Lowe
CC Communications
www.cccommunications.com
slowe@cccom.com

You're who? What interview? Oh, I'm sorry, that company moved out yesterday...just teasing :-)