Interviews Made Simple

Want to create an efficient and highly effective interview process? Consider just asking 3 key questions that will reveal everything you need to know about the candidate. These 3 questions will give you a 360 degree view and help get to the core of who the candidate is.

Question #1:

Why should we hire you?

How the candidate answers this question, will either give you a good sense of who they are, what they stand for, what skills and experiences they bring, and what value they can bring to your organization or they will give you a standard, canned answer about how great they are or something in-between.

Question #2:

What gaps do you have in your background/experience as it relates to the position and how would you close those gaps if we where to hire you?

Candidates who have done a Gap Analysis on themselves and have a roadmap as to how they will close those gaps truly stand above the crowd. The majority of candidates who interview for positions are more focused on their strengths, experiences as it relates to the position and tend to minimize any gaps that they may have. When candidates reveal their gaps during the interview process, they will automatically begin to build a trust relationship with the interviewer, which leads to open, honest dialogue during the interview process.

Question #3:

What is your greatest failure and what did you learn from that failure?

When candidates can articulate their failures and the lessons learned from those failures, this gives the interviewer an opportunity to get to the core of who this person is. Failure is a great thing to discuss in an interview. It helps create an open and honest dialogue, it gives the interviewer a better sense of the whole person, and most importantly it humanizes the interview process and keeps it real.

Asking these 3 questions should be all you need to make a hiring decision. The answers revealed by asking these 3 questions will cover a wide spectrum of topics and may lead to other discussion items during the interview process. Interviews should be simple, efficient and give the interviewer a wholistic picture of who the candidate is and these 3 questions help achieve that.

Paul is CEO and President of One World Consulting Group, LLC and One World Executive Search. Paul is a recruiting strategist, career coach and global recruiter who serves individuals and companies from around the world. Contact me at paul@oneworldconsultinggroup.com or call me at 1-425-766-9778 to discuss your career,recruiting, project and consulting needs.

Thank you for reading my article. I greatly appreciate it!

Paul