01_get-to-know-questions.md

Get To Know Questions

Strength and weaknesses

What are your strengths?

The candidate needs to deliver 4-8 strengths. You will be able to match them with the job offer.

What are your weaknesses?

The candidate delivers 4-6 weaknesses with examples. You will need to ask yourself, if one of the weaknesses is a no-go.

Be aware that this might be a prevention based question.

What was your biggest success in your working career?

Another chance to shine for the candidate. You will be able to figure out how the candidate will come up with great ideas and how one is able to convince others to go for one's ideas.

What have you been criticized for in the last four years? Do you think the feedback was right?

It shows you how self-reflective and self-aware the candidate is. Does the candidate have no answer, it might be a red flag. It shows you as well how well the candidate it taking criticism and what strategies the candidate is taking to tackle them.

Be aware that this might be a prevention based question.

What properties do you have that makes you appear successful?

We will learn to know the best attributes, skills and strengths a candidate will present us. We can compare them with what we need.

What do other people value about you?

We will get an insight of what other people think about the candidate. Usually there is a gab between what image the candidate has from oneself and what other people think about the candidate. If the candidate is not aware of it, it might be a red flag.

How creative are you?

Usually a designer question, not! Creativity is a way of problem solving. You want to see how flexible a candidate is in terms of problem solving situations. Does one take analytical and data driven approaches, or is one taking a new road and tries to be innovative?

Would you describe yourself as a visionary or pragmatic person?

Compare the answer with what you need for the role.

References

Who were your 5 last bosses and how would you rate them? 1 bad and 5 great.

This reveals how well the candidate established a relationship with his supervisors and superiors. You want to look for the 5 rated bosses. 3 rated bosses are already a red flag.

What extraordinary contacts do you have in your network?

The type of people a candidate surrounds oneself reflects a bit about the values a candidate has.

Impact

What influences did have an impact on you?

You will learn to know about what is important for the candidate. Evaluate if this fits to the job description and the company's and team's values.

Goals

Tell me about your goals

The candidate should have an idea about the next career steps and future plans.

What motivation do you have to change your job? Can you give as three reasons?

The candidate can give you two directions. A forward looking direction and a backwards looking direction. If the candidate is looking back, asked further questions about what the candidate would like to change. It will show you how the candidate reflects on the situation.

What workshops and further studies do you plan to attend?

We will see what the candidate has planned for one's career and how one things about developing one's skills.

Expectations

What do you expect from your future employee?

You can compare the expectations from the candidate with what you have to offer. You will be able to know what is important for the candidate.

How close is the position to your ideal expectations? What advantages and disadvantages do you see?

There is plenty of possibilities to be self-reflective about the position you have created, but also learning to know what is important for the candidate. You are able to compare it with the position.

What do you especially like in people you like to work with?

You will figure out, with which type of people the person can work with. You can compare it with the types of your team mates.

Expert knowledge

Which developments did you experience in your expertise area?

It gives insights of how much the candidate informs oneself about the latest developments.

Which developments and challenges do you think will come in the near future?

The candidate shows a sense of needed technology and which new technology is potentially the next one to be adapted.

How do you inform yourself about the lated developments in your area?

A good candidate has a set of strategies to stay up to date. Answers could be workshops, further studies, self-studies, classes, talks, meetups, etc.

Which workshops did you attend in the last year

We check the latest knowledge the candidate has put one's efforts in. It is also a sign wether the candidate takes efforts to develop one's skills.

Soft Skills

How do you do you update your passwords?

It shows a little bit how reliable the candidate is. A good candidate pro-actively prevents any bad situations that might happen in the future and can b prevented. A great candidate automates it or looks for ways so that machines care about it automatically.

If you borrow an item, how do you usually give it back?

It shows how sensitive a person is about other people.

On which criteria will be see your sense of responsibility in your everyday working life?

The candidate provides some examples about one's strength related to working together and unblocking team mates.

Resilience

Have you been into a situation when you just wanted to quit? How did you get out of it?

We want to see how resilient the candidate is and how one reacts inside a stressful situation. What we want to see is that the candidate is looking for several strategies and that at least some of them have been tried to be executed.

How fast do you get past about defeats and failures?

Can the candidate talk about failures? What was the learning? And how fast does the candidate recover from that? It will show you how stress resistant the candidate is.

How much is the current mood affected by a defeat or success?

You want to work within a good working environment. Therefore it is important to know, if the candidate can cheer people up and prevent own emotions to overcome oneself.