Job Interviewing II

How would I create questions to evaluate interpersonal skills? This depends on what work habits you include in your definition of interpersonal skills. Do you mean: teamwork; motivation; leadership; problem solving; empathy; adaptability; verbal communication; etc.?

What type of questions will tell me if a person is detail-oriented?

Try these questions:

Have the jobs you held in the past required little attention, moderate attention, or a great deal of attention to detail? Give me an example of a situation that illustrates this requirement.

Do prefer to work with the "big picture" or the "details" of a situation? Give me an example of an experience that illustrates your preference.

Tell me about a situation where attention to detail was either important or unimportant in accomplishing an assigned task.

Describe a situation where you had the option to leave the details to others or you could take care of them yourself.

Tell me about a difficult experience you had in working with details.

What type of questions will tell me if a person is self motivated?

Here are just a few examples: "Tell me about a time when you went out of your way to complete an assignment?" "Give me an example of a time when a project really excited you?" "Describe a time when you were unmotivated to get a job done?" "Tell me about a time when you did more than was expected of you." "Tell me about a time when you were given an assignment that was distasteful or unpleasant." Get the idea?


How should I use a telephone interview?

Use the telephone interview to:

Fill in missing information on the candidate's resume; Question the candidate to determine his/her level of interest; Get a feeling for the candidate's communication skills; Ask some questions to get a sense of the candidate's technical qualifications; Decide whether to invite the candidate for a personal interview. I was just hired as a supervisor and will be interviewing soon. How can I come up with the right questions to ask?

You can start by reviewing (or writing) the job description. Identify the key duties and responsibilities. Then decide what skills are needed to perform these key duties and responsibilities. Finally, draft some open ended interview questions that will make it necessary for the candidate to explain how they have actually applied these skills in the past.

How many questions should I ask in an interview?

Twelve to 20 experience based questions is about all you can ask in an interview that lasts from 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours. However the number of questions you ask is based on the number of distinct skills that you are looking for. For each interviewer on your team, you should prepare at least two questions per skill that the interviewer is responsible for assessing. For example, if my team was made up of three interviewers and we were all gathering data about the same six skills, I would need to develop 36 questions (3 interviewers x 6 skills x 2 questions/skill).

Also, Don't give any two interviewers the same questions to ask. The idea is to get as much data from a candidate as you can without giving the candidate and opportunity to rehearse. If more than one interviewer asks the same question, you can see how this might compromise the quality of the data you get.

Would you recommend a structured interview?

Absolutely! I'm a strong believer in structured interviews, that is, interviews where the questions have been developed based on a well done job-skills analysis. This is the best way to insure that your interviews will be complete, consistent, and fair. Also, you will find it much easier to evaluate each candidate's qualifications based on their responses to your questions.
What is the value, if any, of questions like; "If you were an animal in the zoo, what animal would you be?

Zero value. These questions only satisfy an interviewer's need for ego gratification. The biggest problem with a question like this is that it has no "face validity." The candidate has no idea how to answer such a question and these questions smack of amateur psychology. My advice: stick to open-ended questions that require a candidate to describe specific job related events that reflect on their skills.

The process I recommend requires that you first ask the candidate to describe a specific job related experience (we call this a "behavior based question"). Here's an example: "Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a disagreeable person." In order to get complete information you'll need to ask the candidate to tell you such details as: who was involved, where did the event take place, when did it take place, what led up to this situation, what actions were taken by all parties, what was the final outcome.


A behavior based interview is the most practical for people who do not conduct interviews as a profession. This type of interview helps you focus on "what" a person can do (i.e. the skills they have) vs. "why" they do it. Behavior based interviews take advantage of the fact that people are creatures of habit and repeat patterns of behavior over and over. So, if we can get job candidates to recall specific job-related events, we can use this information to predict how a person will perform in a similar situation in the future.