Best Interview Questions to Ask Job Candidates

If you are an employer looking for the best interview questions to ask candidates in a job interview, you’ve come to the right place. This list of 55 interview questions divided into 11 categories contains every question you’ll ever need to choose the best job candidate.

Intro

What are the best questions to ask job candidates?

An interview is your ultimate chance to hire the best talent .

You need to ask questions that will determine not only if your candidates have that perfect combination of the right personality, skills, knowledge and experiences you are looking for, but also if they will fit in your team and your company culture.

In this blog post, we will present the selection of the 55 very best interview questions that will help you choose the best candidat e for your:

1. Open job position
2. Team
3. Company culture.

Asking these questions will save your time and effort and ensure that you successfully fulfill your assignment by finding and hiring the ideal job candidate .

➡️ Download The Ultimate Candidate Interview & Employee Onboarding Checklist!

Basic interview questions

Use basic interview questions to learn more about your candidates and test their knowledge and interest in your open job position.

Best basic interview questions:

1. What are the three most important things we need to know about you?
2. Why are you interested in this job?
3. Why are you the right candidate for this position?
4. Why are looking for a new job?
5. How would you address (insert real-life, job-related problem)?

Employer Branding interview questions

Use Employer Branding questions to gain valuable insight into candidates’ perception of your Employer Brand.

Best Employer Branding interview questions:

1. Why do you want to work at our company? / Name three things that you like the most about our company.
2. How did you find out about our job opening?
3. Did you get a chance to present yourself well during our selection process?
4. What can we do to improve our interview process?
5. Do you have any questions for us?

Analytical skills interview questions

Use analytical skills interview questions to test and measure candidate’s ability to think logically, evaluate advantages and disadvantages and to break down and analyze data.

Best analytical skills interview questions:

1. Describe a project or situation where you successfully demonstrated your analytical abilities.
2. When you are faced with a problem, what do you do? Describe the steps in your problem-solving approach.
3. Give me an example of a situation when you took a risk to achieve a goal. What was the outcome?
4. In your experience, would you say that developing and using a detailed procedure was always necessary for your job?
5. Imagine a situation in which your one of your colleagues wants to solve a problem in a certain way, but the other colleague has a totally different approach in mind. They come to you asking for a help in deciding on the right approach. What do you do?

Cultural fit interview questions

Use cultural fit interview questions to single out candidates whose values, beliefs and behavior fit in with your company’s culture.

Best cultural fit interview questions:

1. Describe the type of work environment in which you can really give your best and be most productive.
2. Did you become a really good friend with any of your colleagues at your previous (or current) workplace? What do you think about having close relationships with your coworkers? Is this a good or a bad practice?
3. Describe a situation where your colleagues disagreed with your ideas. What did you do?
4. Do you prefer working alone or as part of a team? Please explain your answer.
5. What does your ideal work day look like?

Leadership skills interview questions

Use leadership skills interview questions to identify, test and measure candidate’s leadership capabilities, experience and knowledge.

Best leadership skills interview questions:

1. According to your experience, what is the best and most effective way to motivate the members of a team you lead?
2. What is the best part of being a team leader? And the worst? Please explain your answers.
3. What is more important to you, that your team members like you or that they get the job done?
4. Tell me about a time where there has been a disagreement within your team. What did you do?
5. Give me an example of a time when you were leading a team and something went wrong. What happened? What did you do?

Communication skills interview questions

Use communication skills interview questions to test and measure candidate’s ability to communicate properly with different people in different situations (e.g. supervisors, team members, clients, vendors, etc.).

Best communication skills interview questions:

1. If you had to choose between being a good listener or a good communicator, what would be your choice? Please explain your answer.
2. Tell me about the time you had to give a presentation to a group of people with no preparation? What was the main difficulty you experienced? How did you handle that?
3. Describe a situation where you needed to work with a client or customer who was very different from you. How was that for you? How did you approach that situation?
4. What is a constructive criticism for you? What kind of critique would help you improve and do a better job next time?
5. Have you ever faced some obstacles or difficulties in communicating your ideas to a manager? What happened? How did you handle that?

Personality interview questions

Use personality interview questions to identify, test and measure the right personality characteristics in your candidates.

Best personality interview question:

1. Are you the type of person who always looks at the “big picture” or are you more “detail oriented”?
2. What was the most useful criticism you ever received?
3. How do you handle stress and pressure at work?
4. What do you dislike doing?
5. How do you feel when someone interrupts you while you are in the middle of an important task?

Emotional intelligence interview questions

Use emotional intelligence interview questions to test and measure candidate’s ability to identify and manage their own emotions and the emotions of other people.

Best emotional intelligence (EQ) interview questions:

1. Give a specific example of a time when you had to address an angry customer. What was the problem and what was the outcome?
2. Describe a situation when you were leading a team on a project. What did you do to motivate your colleagues to give their best?
3. Give an example of a time when you made a mistake because you did not listen carefully to what your colleague had to say.
4. Tell me about a time you received negative feedback from your boss. How did that make you feel?
5. Is it more important to focus on results and tasks or people and emotions? Explain your answer.

Critical thinking interview questions

Use critical thinking skills interview questions to test and measure candidate’s ability to think independentl y, analyze and evaluate an issue, and understand logical connections between ideas.

Best critical thinking skills interview questions

1. How quickly do you make decisions? How do you do it? Do you prefer thinking things through carefully before making a decision?
2. What is the most difficult decision you’ve ever had to make at work? How did you arrive at your decision? What was the result?
3. Give me an example of a situation when your colleague presented you a new idea that was odd or unusual. What did you do?
4. Give me an example of a time you discovered that your boss made a mistake. What did you do? What was the outcome?
5. Please describe a situation in which you had to make a critical choice based on incomplete data. How did you do it?

Problem-solving interview questions

Use problem-solving interview questions to identify, test and measure candidate’s approach to difficult and unusual situations.

Best problem-solving interview questions:

1. Describe a situation at work when you were faced with a problem you could not solve. What did you do?
2. Are you the type of person who will always try to solve the problem on your own before asking for help?
3. Describe a time when you used a creative solution to tackle some job-related problem.
4. Give us an example of a situation when you realized that you won’t be able to meet the set deadline. What did you do?
5. When you are faced with an urgent problem, how do you react? Are you the type of person who jumps right into solving problem, or do you first carefully assess the situation?

Behavioral interview questions

Use behavioral interview questions to predict future job performance by understanding past performance.

Best behavioral interview questions:

1. Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult client. How did you handle that situation?
2. Give me an example of a time when you did not meet your supervisor’s expectation. What happened and how did you react?
3. Tell me about a time when you were faced with extremely tight deadlines. How did you handle that?
4. Give me an example of a time when you showed initiative and took the lead.
5. Give me an example of a major mistake you made. How did that happen? How did you proceed with it?

Interview questions – discussion

Did you find some new ideas to refresh and improve your interview process?
Which of the mentioned questions do you already use?
Which one works best for you?
Do you use some great interview questions that we haven’t mentioned?

Please share your experience with us in the comments!