The weirdest interview questions and what they mean.

There are as many opinions and methods of conducting prospective employee interviews as there are shareholders in Telstra.

You could go ‘mano e mano’ and take them on yourself, or you could go panel style and invite a number of work colleagues to sit in to grill the applicant. You could gather candidates in a room and mass evaluate them. You could interview all the candidates and then short list the best and then re-interview those.

My personal favourite for senior vacancies is to bring the best candidate(s) in three times using three different interview styles. I find this gives you a true sense of the person you're interviewing, their abilities and their commitment.

Whatever interview style and method you choose, make it relevant to the position and your company. Run it on a pre-conceived agenda and evaluate it according to pre-defined criteria. This allows you to objectively compare ‘apples with apples’ and ensure each candidate has had equal fair treatment

Mix it up

Warm up by asking some straight forward questions to verify their qualifications, credentials and memberships. Then mix up the questions.Follow up by asking some probing questions to test their ability to problem solve and some open ended questions to see how they respond.

Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions and never fear silence. Give the candidate plenty of time to think, frame and present their answers – you can learn just as much from their silence and thinking process as you can from their spoken words. Here are some questions I prepared earlier:

6 Questions

1. If you want to test their ability to analyse, you might ask the candidate for an example of a difficult situation they managed to resolve. Was it resolved to the satisfaction of their boss? Did they see it coming and what skills did they use to overcome obstacles to its resolution. My analysis of this answer is to look for whether they have a reliance on fact or intuition and whether this aligns with the client’s working style and needs.

2. To discover their leadership style, I might ask about an event that caused the candidate to re-evaluate how they led or managed their team. My take would be to look at whether the candidate understands their own management style, whether they are able to adapt it to other situations, and whether it is suited to my client’s company.

3. Process and continuous improvement is the ability to follow the preset company methodology, but also just as importantly is their ability to innovate within the process. Questions like: ‘Tell me about a good process that you made even better’, or ‘tell me about a time when an existing process just didn’t work’, will give you the clues to whether they can think outside the square.

4. To know what they know about the company they are interviewing with, I’ll throw in a bomb like ‘What would you do differently if you ran this company?’. If they’ve done their homework they’ll be able to venture an opinion. If when they do, I can see how they respond and how comfortable they are. This tells me how competent they are in awkward positions and at making difficult on-the-spot decisions.

5. One of the keys is also to find commitment to their career path, so ask ‘If you could start all over again, what career direction would you take?’ This adresses their career choice and provides clear indicators of their past success and future triumphs.

6. Skills are also important but in interviewing I almost take them for granted. If you have telephone interviewed, and short listed them, you only need confirm their skill set with questions like, “Compared to others with a similar background in this area, how would you assess your technical skills?” and wait for a list of key strengths and talents and the confidence with which they present these to you.

Written by:

Morris Miselowski is founder of the national business strategy and advisory group Success Through Focus . He has won seven national business awards and is a highly sought after speaker. Email: succeed@successthroughfocus.com

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