My Favorite Interview Questions

It is funny how these post topics tend to cluster....I just did a post about resumes and now this one.

David Lorenzo, over at Career Intensity, just did a post that shared some of my favorite interview questions. Curious? Check them out here.

As I was writing this post, I remembered this story: Over on my main website, I have a page that offers a few free e-books, one being Interviewers Secrets Revealed. Several months back, someone that I was going to be interviewing Googled me and found my site and the e-book. Can you imagine his delight? He downloaded it and got a good sense for how I work as an interviewer.

Did he ask the questions I suggested? No.
Was he prepared for my questions? Not really.

I mention this because if you are asking the right questions, only a genuine and thoughtful answer will work. You can't rehearse anything that will make you appear AMAZING. Amazingness comes through in how you respond in the here and now.

What do you think of my questions?

Comments

[jon]

Thanks for the e-book Lisa - useful stuff!

From the blog post on Career Intensity I really like these questions because I think the answers would tell you a lot about how well the person would fit and whether they're interested in continually improving.

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Over the next two years, how would you like to grow as a leader?

What do you think is the ideal makeup and function of a senior leadership team? How often should they meet? What should the focus of their meetings be? How else should they work together? What authority/ownership should they assert with each other?

Describe your leadership and management style. How do you approach ensuring everyone on your team is working on the right stuff? How do you communicate? What is your belief about what makes people perform their best?

[Lisa Haneberg]

Jon: I am glad you found the questions helpful. Yep, finding the right fit it the point and that's why I like these questions too.

[bwedwards]

Great questions, I will keep these logged, as well as read your e-book. I just hired a new employee this week. Even though the position wasn't at a leadership team level, I asked about half of the questions that you have here. Nice to have a more formal approach laid out that avoids pre-canned responses. Thanks!

[Lisa Haneberg]

Excellent - yes, I use some of these questions for most positions. Everyone should be leaving their mark of their position and company.

[Linda]

I really like your interview questions. Why? Because they go beyond the "what" of a person and get into the real "who". My favorite is the last one - "What’s one thing you do better than most human beings on the face of this Earth?" I'm really gonna give that one some personal thought!

[Lisa Haneberg]

Yep - We all do something better than most others.

[Blaine Collins]

Lisa, I liked the whole set of questions, especially the first one. With slight adjustments, it could be used for any applicant who would be working on teams.

Each member of a team brings unique strengths and weaknesses. What unique skills and talents did you bring to the last/current team BEYOND your functional knowledge? In what ways did you rely on other team members for coaching and advice?

By excluding "function knowledge", the first part opens the door for applicants to broadly discuss their contributions to the team itself. The second part allows the interviewer to assess both whether the applicant is comfortable trusting other team members and how self aware the applicant is to their own limitations.

[Lisa Haneberg]

Blaine - Thanks and I hope you find them helpful. I think that getting the focus away from functional skills for part of the interview is important. When someone is seen as a bad hire, more often than not it is because of these nonfunctional skills and styles.

[mike mikota]

Give me 3 examples of your best managerial interview questions

[mike mikota]

Give me 3 examples of your best managerial interview questions

[Lisa Haneberg]

If you follow the link in the post, you've got them.

[Steve Aaron]

I had downloaded your ebook way back and have been using the interview questions ever since :-) so first of all thanks a lot for that :-) but the other day I was wondering... How should one formulate interview questions when one is not having domain/functional knowledge in the area one is hiring for? In other words, can a CEO/Owner/President hire for jobs he has never done himself or does not know how to do? Infact, I read somewhere that you can hire/delegate only those tasks which you know yourself well... but then I wonder how the CEOs & Business Leaders of large companies hire VP Level Executives or Functional Heads since I am sure they won't have all the functional knowledge required to run all the different verticals of their business. What are your thoughts??