Will they ‘fit’ into your business?
Once you have planned your strategy for assessing the candidate’s skills, move on to plan how you are going to establish if they have the personality traits or qualities that you have identified as necessary to do the job. These are the characteristics you possess inherently and you cannot be trained in. As we considered when putting together the candidate specification, these are more difficult as they can be subjective. You should identify what you specifically mean by these qualities and be able to justify why they are important to do the job. Relate them to situations in your company.
Questions to assess whether they are lively, studious, outgoing
You can judge some of these attributes by how the candidate comes across at interview but beware, interviews are very false situations. Candidates react to their interviewer so if you are a relaxed, outgoing person then the candidate is likely to appear like that or behave more like that than perhaps they actually are.
Discuss with them the type of working environment they are in now, and whether they enjoy it.
Can you tell me about your current / previous working environment, i.e. open-plan office or individual offices?
How do you find that environment to work in?
Would you prefer a different one?
It is useful to know if the candidate is used to working in a similar environment to yours, and you can relate other questions specifically to your company.
We have an open-plan office. Have you worked in that type of office before?
What do you think are the advantages / disadvantages?
You are recruiting a receptionist for a private hospital. They need to be outgoing as they are dealing with the public, but sensitive and able to deal with patients who are unwell or have just received bad news.
How would you respond to the above?
Have you had any similar situations where you have to have a different approach to different people?
If you are still unsure then ask about what they enjoy doing outside of work. Do they go to evening classes or are they out with friends?
Questions to assess their tenacity to get things done
Ask yourself what tasks this candidate may need to perform in your company where they will have to show tenacity. Use these scenarios to ask the candidate what they would do. Are they prepared to keep asking you questions until they can solve the problem, or do they just give up?
Staff working in property rental businesses often need to sort out complex queries that may straddle several departments. The sales team have found a new tenant, head office have issued the lease, the reference department have checked references, but the property owner is complaining that they have not received their first rent cheque. How would you sort this out?
The candidate will not know the correct answer because they do not know how your company works, so they will need to ask you questions until they can work it out. You can encourage them further by telling them they can ask as many questions as they like.
Go on to ask them for examples, but make sure you get them to qualify what they are saying.
What other situations have you had to deal with where you have had to liaise with several other departments?
Did you solve the query?
Was anyone else involved?
Questions to establish if they have an eye for detail
Once again, asking the candidate how they would deal with a situation in your own company may work well, and then ask them for further examples.
Do you spot things that are wrong even if you have not been asked to check them? Such as?
Can you give me an example of where you have to check things?
What sort of mistakes do you find?
This is a good example of where a practical task can work really well.
Questions to assess analytical ability
The best way to appraise this is to set a task. Design a task or several to mirror the kind of analytical duties they would be doing in the job but make sure that it is understandable to someone not working in the company. If speed will be important, put a timeline on the task.
Additionally establish what analysis they do in their current role, and ask for examples.
What are they looking for or producing from the analysis?
How easy is it to find?
What sort of reports (if applicable) do they generate?
Who do these reports go to?
Do they take action on the reports or is this up to someone else?
Questions to assess confidentiality
Confidentiality can play a major part in many different roles. Human Resource positions are perhaps the obvious ones where staff have access to personnel records including salary details. When you hire someone into these roles they will usually have some work experience as it’s unlikely that someone straight from education will have the skills needed. Look for candidates who can demonstrate that they can keep confidentiality. Find out first what situations they have been in by asking for general information.
Have you ever had to keep confidential information or documents?
Was this part of your role when you started with the company?
Very often people are given access to sensitive information once they have been with the company for some time and have ‘proven’ themselves, so find out if that is the situation with your candidates.
Has knowing this information caused you any problems or conflict of interests?
Having this information can sometimes prove to be difficult and it can become a conflict of interest in certain situations.
A director is asked by his assistant to sign the order for new office equipment as previously agreed. The director is involved in highly confidential takeover discussions which if they go ahead will result in the office being closed.
The example above can be used as a scenario to ask the candidate how they would react. You are looking for the candidate to come up with a sensitive answer which will stall the order without alerting the assistant to the problem. Set them a situation which could occur in the role you are recruiting, or ask them for an example of where they have had to deal with this and follow with:
How would / did you deal with that?
Did / would that achieve the outcome you wanted?
Questions to establish honesty
Honesty can be linked with the questions on confidentiality but by honesty we are usually looking for someone involved with something more tangible than for example information. They may be cash handling or have access to goods of some sort. The best solution to this is to take temptation out of people’s way and have systems that ensure against dishonesty but this can prove very difficult. Ideally find candidates who can demonstrate that they are honest and trustworthy.
Have you been in a situation of trust before?
This may not be in a work situation; it could be as treasurer of their local football club for example, but you are looking for someone that other people trust.
There is a lot of cash in our office so we need people we can trust. Can you give me an example of when you have had to demonstrate your honesty?
Would your friends describe you as honest? Why?
Questions to establish initiative
If having initiative is one of your criteria, think about the situations in the role you are recruiting where the successful candidate will have to demonstrate they can think on their feet.
Set some real or imaginary situations and ask how they would react.
Your company imports clothing and footwear from around the world, which is mostly transported by sea freight. The products are seasonal and cannot be repeated. You have just had it confirmed that one of the ships from South America, carrying a significant amount of your new season’s footwear, ready for launching in two weeks’ time, is on fire. What would you do?
There will be different answers to this in different companies, and remember that your interviewee does not know how your systems work. You are looking for someone who can think around the problem and come up with several possible solutions.
Ask them for examples of where they have had to think on their feet and how they made their decision.
We are looking for someone who can react quickly in sometimes pressurised situations. Can you give me an example of a situation you have been in where you have had to use your initiative?
The examples they give you may not relate to your company or the way it works, so ask them to detail how they made their decision and quantify their success.
How did you make your decision?
Can you talk me through your thought process?
Did your solution work?
Could you have made a better one?
- Use the personality traits that you identified on the candidate specification to plan your questions.
- Ask for examples from outside of work if necessary.
- Give them a real scenario that you have in your company and ask if they have been in a similar one and what they did.
- Check that you have enough information to assess the ‘essential traits’.