3 interview questions every employer needs to ask

Any job candidate worth interviewing is going to do their due diligence on you and your business, and be prepped and ready to answer the usual interview questions like …

What are your strengths/ weaknesses?
Why are you interested in working here/ what attracts you to this company?
What can you offer us/ why are you different?
Where do you see yourself in five/ ten years?
Tell me about a time when you made a mistake?
What are you most proud of?
Talk me through your CV / resumé
How would you describe yourself/ how would your friends describe you?
Why are you looking for a new job?
How do you handle pressure?

But how do you separate the candidates who’ll tell you what you what to hear versus the ones who’ll fit your company culture and genuinely move your business forward? We asked Joe Wiggins of Glassdoor for the best interview questions to ask future employees to avoid the tired ‘perfectionism is my biggest weakness’ rhetoric.

1. Select two colleagues that you have worked with before and explain what you thought of them.

We’ve all heard the saying “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch,” and many of us have seen it play out in real time with one negative employee undermining management and creating to a toxic, unsupportive environment. Hiring new talent can often disrupt the current team environment, so Joe advises to ask potential new hires about their former colleagues and most importantly, their attitudes towards them to help raise any red flags.

Joe says, “here you’re looking for answers that bring to light collaboration, support, teamwork as well as an understanding of values in themselves and others.”

2. Tell me about the journey you took to achieve your set goals?

Not everyone is a card-carrying goal setter – and that’s ok, but what you can gain from asking this question is an insight into potential employees’ resilience stores and their ability to learn and grow into the position.

“The more enlightened candidate will realise that the route to fulfilling one’s ambitions and goals consists more often of a series of setbacks and stop/starts than a perfect diagonal, which suggests an important ability to fail, learn from mistakes and persevere,” Joe says.

3. What type of work culture is important to you and how do you contribute to that?

If you haven’t been prioritising your company’s culture, you might want to start asap. A recent study found that new employees, particularly millennials, rank office culture, career progression, training and development, and company values all ahead of salary.

“To create a sustainable business you need openness and collaboration, not egocentric personalities,” Joe says. “An openness within and an openness to others are what I am looking for when asking this question.”