3 of the best interview questions to ask candidates

You've got a few resumes you like and the cover letters are making you think that these candidates have real potential, but you're not sure that your interview questions will really assess the quality or fit of the candidates. Many small-business owners struggle with their recruitment management, so ensuring that you learn a lot from the interviews is important when it comes down to making the final decision.

Here are three simple questions that will enable you to assess three important qualities of every person you chat with.

Suitability – "How do you feel about your last supervisor?"

This question can reveal a lot about an employee, and not just about the relationship they had with their last boss. Different types of people respond to different ways of management, so this question will allow you to recognise whether or not the gripes candidates have about how they are managed will make your working relationship with them difficult. If you understand your own management style, then use this question to reveal some of the hidden preferences of candidates.

Resilience – "Can you tell me about your biggest failure (and what you learned from that)?"

Often you and the candidates want to focus on successes. However, people tend to demonstrate their greatest capacity to learn and take on feedback when they respond to failure. What you are really looking for is the way they frame the failure. Candidates that can prove they gain insights through reflecting on their mistakes are showing that they are resilient. This question, arguably, can reveal more about the candidate's future performance than purely discussing their successes and the processes that led to them – though this should be something to discuss as well.

Enthusiasm – "Have you got any questions to ask me?"

One of the most revealing questions to include in your interview set comes right at the end. It isn't just so candidates can clarify any aspects of the role, it is an important enthusiasm test. Therefore, if a candidate does not have any answer to this question, it often is not a good sign. A candidate who cares about the position should have prepared some questions to ask and should want to know as much as they can – so this question is a great way to assess how enthusiastic they are.

For more advice or assistance with the interview process, get in touch with Flexi Personnel today.