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14 Killer Questions to Ask in Your Next Interview

Interviewing can be a tedious and stressful time. Which questions should you ask, which ones are appropriate? Are you going to pick the right person for the position? Below is a list of the top 14 interview questions hiring managers find most effective. These inquiries range from basic to complex and give descriptions of what the question accomplishes. Some of the questions are very straight forward and some are tricky ones that bring out the candidates personality and behavior without directly asking them.

What circumstance brings you here today?
This is one of the best opening questions ever. This open ended question surprises many candidates. If they do not respond quickly, just sit quietly and wait for the response. Some candidates reveal problems with their current employer, potential insubordination, and both positive or negative character traits.

How would your best friend describe you?
In most cases, the response to this question indicates how the candidate wants you to feel they are perceived by friends. Take notes on the response and then ask, “May I call your best friend and see how they describe you?” You may or may not be interested in talking to the best friend. However, the response and body language after the follow-up question can indicate if you received a truthful response. I suggest asking this question near the beginning of the interview. It helps you get truthful responses for the rest of your time with the candidate.

What would you say are your 2 greatest weaknesses?
This question reveals the candidate’s ability to identify the need for personal improvement. The best responses include a plan on how the candidate is addressing the weakness. Some candidates also do an effective job turning their weakness into a positive, which indicates the candidate has good alternative thinking or good sales skills. Watch out for candidates who are unaware or will not admit that they have weaknesses.

How do you alleviate stress?
Every job has stress. So if someone says they are not stressed or claim to not do anything about it, then they are either lying or they do not know how to control it. Look for positive activities or hobbies, rather than substance use or dangerous activities as stress relievers.

What are your short and long term goals?
The response to this question usually reveals if the candidate has personal or professional goals. If they do not have a quick response, it may indicate they do not plan ahead. I especially like responses which indicate drive, planning and good work/life balance. You may also need to ask for more details about certain goals to gain insight into whether or not the employee intends to stay for awhile or just gain a little experience and move on. Consider asking the follow-up question, “What are 3 goals that you have achieved in the past year?”

What type of work environment do you prefer?
When choosing potential employees, it is helpful to know what type of environment in which they prefer to work. If the company is very professional and usually quiet, someone who likes a loud casual environment might not be the best fit. It is sometimes good to hire someone who does not fit the mold, but it is usually best to hire people who fit your work environment.

What is your typical way of dealing with conflict?
As with stress, conflicts are something we deal with frequently. Conflicts may range from differences with a supervisor, to differing lunch preferences. Most employers look for someone who can deal with an issue without getting frustrated. Either ask for a real-life example or build a hypothetical scenario and ask how they would handle the conflict. Some managers, who prefer a more confrontational interview style, intentionally create conflict and stress in the interview to see how the candidate responds.

What tools or habits do you use to keep organized?
Instead of asking are you an organized person, this makes the interviewee prove and describe their organizational skills. Most hiring managers expect that their employees have some type of system to stay organized. Whether it is using a planner, or electronic calendar, these tools confirm that the potential employee is reliable and responsible.

Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond to get a job done.
This is an excellent question that lets a potential employee really sell themself. In doing so, the hiring manager can see what type of person they are really interviewing. They can also measure how out of the way this candidate had to go in order to complete their duty. This gives a clearer picture about the work ethic of the potential employee.

What was a major obstacle you were able to overcome in the past year?
Problem solving is the major topic covered by this question. What kind of thinker is this candidate? Can they do projects on their own or does their manager need to hold their hand. It also confirms how determined they can be toward a project.

In what ways do you raise the bar for yourself and others around you?
This question gives the interviewer an idea of who is and is not an above average performer. It also demonstrates leadership potential and the willingness to be a team player.

Tell me about two memorable projects, one success and one failure. To what do you attribute the success and failure?
Asking this question helps determine the candidate’s ability to learn from successes and failures.

What unique experience or qualifications separate you from other candidates?
Some candidates have interesting characteristics and experiences that will not be exposed without asking a question like this.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
Save this question for the end of the interview. A good response should be consistent and defined when you asked about short and long term goals. Beware of candidates who plan to be the same position five years from now. My favorite response is, “I plan to have either your job or your boss’ job.”

Interviewing is about finding the right candidate for a position. Proper questions reveal the most promising candidate for a hiring manager. Before interviewing, write down the characteristics the ideal candidate would possess and try to tailor your questions around those attributes. Also, open ended questions make applicants create a clearer image of who they are for the hiring manager. Interviewing is simply a matching game to see which candidate is the best fit for the position.

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Salvaging Problem Salespeople

Brian Jeffrey, President, Salesforce Assessments

Some people will delight in telling you that all salespeople are problems and nothing but problems. That’s not quite true but every now and then you hire or inherit a problem.

What you do about the problem depends on what the problem is and its magnitude. Sometimes there’s nothing that can be done. Other times it’s simply a matter of coaching the person. More serious problems may be solved with counseling while the biggies may require major surgery (termination).

Problems generally fall into three categories: Operational, Personality and Performance.

Operational Problems

Operational problems are generally created by the company’s internal systems (or lack thereof!). They’re often beyond the salesperson’s control but can cause a great deal of frustration for the person and can create a demoralized sales team.

Operational problems, while not directly related to the salespeople, are often blamed on them. In most cases, operational problems are not evident to management because they can’t see the forest for the trees.

Be cautious about accusing a salesperson of being a problem until you’re sure that the root cause isn’t the system he or she has to work with. Listen to the person’s concerns with an open mind.

Frank, round-table discussions can help get to the bottom of most operational problems. Use standard problem-solving techniques to avoid finger-pointing. Remember the four problem-solving questions:

1. What is the problem?

2. What are the causes?

3. What are some solutions?

4. What is the best solution?

Brainstorming the answers to these questions will keep you moving in a productive direction.

Personality Problems

Personality problems and conflicts aren’t likely to go away. Some people are more flexible than others and can modify their behaviour to accommodate others. But modifying your behaviour is not the same as changing your personality.

Much like one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel, one bad attitude can poison the work environment.

You solve attitude problems by getting to the bottom of the situation and correcting it. Even when you are powerless to correct the problem, just talking about it often relieves the pressure. Sometimes all it takes is a sympathetic ear.

If whatever is bothering the individual can’t be changed, it’s time to suggest that he accept the situation and get on with the job. If he can’t manage that, perhaps it’s time for him to move along to another company where the climate is more to his liking.

Performance Problems

Performance problems can be difficult to diagnose. It’s hard to know if your new salesperson is just slow off the mark or if he’s a non-performer. It’s not easy to tell if a seasoned salesperson is simply having a dry spell or if she’s developing into a chronic poor performer.

Uncovering performance problems is easier if you’ve been keeping proper sales records. These records will allow you to do performance comparisons to uncover the problem areas.

Performance problems fall into four categories:

1. Non-performers;

2. Poor performers;

3. Over-performers,

4. Burnout.

Non-Performers

This problem generally surfaces with new salespeople although an old-timer can become a non-performer, usually because of burnout. To a great extent, sales is a numbers game. So if a new salesperson isn’t making his or her numbers on a continuing basis, it’s time to part company. Sounds blunt but it’s the only way.

The first thing to do is decide what is a reasonable time for a new salesperson to come up to speed in your company. Then provide the training, support and coaching, and monitor the results. Give the person every opportunity to succeed. If the results are not there within a reasonable amount of time and you can’t identify why, cut your losses. You can’t afford non-performers.

Poor Performers

A poor performer is usually someone who already has a proven track record but is not performing up to par. Assuming the person is not suffering from burnout, it’s time to monitor his or her activities more closely.

When things are going well, you can (and should) monitoring results. When things are not going well, it’s time to monitor the activities that lead to results.

Sit down with your problem child and set mutually acceptable quotas, activity levels, and a time line for reaching them. Poor performers can usually be coached or counseled back to full production by a patient manager.

Over-Performers

While this may seem like an odd problem, having an over-performer on staff can be very disruptive. These are the people who sell more than any three of your other salespeople but create havoc while doing it. Team spirit is shot to hell because the over-performer has his own agenda and isn’t going to let something like team spirit stand in the way of his commission cheque.

What do you do with over-performers? Sometimes nothing. Sometimes you can use the over-performer as an example for the others to emulate — providing the over-performer’s bad habits aren’t too bad and you can stand the increased aggravation. Most often we simply tolerate the over-performer and vacillate between being sorry we don’t have more salespeople like him and being glad we don’t!

Burnout

Good salespeople are masters at hiding burnout. They may continue to appear positive and upbeat, but their sales numbers will tell the story. Other signs of burnout are failure to keep commitments, reports not being turned in on time, excessive forgetfulness, change in general attitude, and low or no motivation. The three major causes of sales burnout are health/medical problems, personal problems, and overwork.

As a manager, you’re not really qualified to handle health or medical-related problems. You can, however, suggest (or in some cases insist) that a person get a thorough medical. A good general practitioner can also uncover personal problems, particularly if there are no major physical ones.

Many managers aren’t qualified to handle personal problems either. While I don’t recommend you turn into an amateur psychologist, sometimes all it takes is a sympathetic ear and the problem becomes self-solving.

Final Thought

While you might wish it weren’t so, a sales manager’s job is one of solving problems — performance problems, interpersonal problems, corporate sales problems, you name it. But, hey, without problems to solve, who would need sales managers anyway?

Author
Brian Jeffrey, CSP (Certified Sales Professional) and president of Salesforce Assessments Ltd, is a sales management consultant, columnist, author, and former sales trainer with over 40 years experience. His company provides hiring tools to help sales managers and others make even better hiring decisions. For more articles like this one, or to learn how we can help you avoid hiring duds, visit www.SalesforceAssessments.com

Related Topics: Employee Relations, Sales, Small Business    1 Comment    

The Art of Firing

Guy Kawasaki, Author & Managing Director of Garage Technologies

I’ve fired people a few times in my career, and I hated everything about the process. I’m not sure I did it well when I did it, but I’ve thought a lot about how it should be done. Here is my best shot at “The Art of Firing People.”

1. Consult impartial people. As soon as you have misgivings about a person, talk to one or two people who can give you an impartial appraisal of the situation: Is the person truly at fault? Is she a scapegoat? Are the people calling for her firing any better?

(In my career, I have been blessed with three people who acted as my sounding board in issues like this. All were women because women are much better at this than men, but I digress…)

2. Get professional advice. It’s a bad sign if you get too good at firing people because this means you’re doing it too often. As soon as you begin the process of devising an action plan to prevent a firing or you think it’s necessary to fire a person, consult someone who understands employment law. This is usually a human resources person, but it could also be outside legal counsel if you don’t have a human resources person.

3. Search your soul. You should be able to articulate exactly what you think is going wrong. Could it be your fault? Have you established clear goals? If sales were going well, would we be having this discussion? The most telling question you can answer is:

Are you (and the rest of the folks who are calling for the employee’s termination) judging his results against your intentions?

For example, are you judging his sales results against your intentions to ship the product on time? In a perfect world, you would do the opposite: Judge the employee’s intentions against your results. In a realistic world, you would judge his results against your results. Unfortunately, the only people who usually receive the benefit of the doubt are the people calling for his termination.

4. Give people a second chance. I don’t care if you live in an “at will” state in which you can terminate anyone at any time or what the search of your soul revealed, it is still immoral to fire people without helping them understand what they need to improve and providing the opportunity to do so.

There is a line of reasoning that goes like this: “Nobody ever got fired too early…don’t put off a difficult decision because everyone is wondering why you’re keeping the bozo around…you should have fired him long ago.”

I believed in this “rapid fire” theory until I saw a management team act like piranha attacking a drowning calf when it considered firing an employee. No one wanted to give the employee the benefit of the doubt and a chance to turn the situation around. Luckily, the CEO interceded and kept the employee; subsequently, the employee turned into a great contributor.

There are three problems with rapid-fire firing: first, it may not be the employee’s fault that things aren’t going well. Second, the employee can improve—people do change. Third, although some employees may rejoice, the smart ones will be thinking, “So this is how this company works. There’s no warning. If you’re not popular, you get taken out.”

5. Document everything. Ideally, you’ve already got a paper trail describing the employee’s job performance but the moment you think that they might be fired, start keeping detailed records. There are two reasons to do this. First, frankly, to cover your ass. Second, writing things down forces you to clarify your thoughts. When you read what you’ve written, it should be obvious that you’re doing the right thing.

6. Do it yourself. You probably hired the person. Even if you inherited the person, you managed him. So you fire him. This isn’t something you can delegate or evade. Conduct a brief (fifteen minutes maximum) one-on-one meeting and tell the person your decision. Be as calm and rational as possible. Do not alter your approach even if (or, more accurately, especially if) the person isn’t calm and rational.

7. Be firm. Never go into a “final” conversation thinking that if it goes well, you might not fire the person. Decide and then implement. If you get talked out of it, the odds are that you’ll simply fire the person later. However, don’t confuse being firm with being mean. You should be firm in your decision, but kind in how your decision is communicated and implemented.

8. Don’t be guilted into anything. For example, a common request is to provide job references. Don’t promise anything like this because you’re feeling guilty. Your personnel department can provide a reference—like the dates of employment—but that’s all you should commit to do. You can always decide to do more later, but you can’t do less than what you committed to do.

9. Show people the door. The day you fire someone should be the last day that person is in the office. This is even more true for firings than layoffs. There is very little to gain by having a fired person hang around for a few days or weeks, and there is a lot to lose: ill will, sabotage, and theft. Give the person a chance to collect their personal items and data from their computers and then get keys, delete accounts, and change passwords.

10. Don’t disparage the victim. There are three good reasons for this. First, it’s the classy thing to do, and you want to show the remaining employees that you have class. Second, you could be tipping the karmic scales to be on the receiving end of the sword the next time. Third, the person you’re firing could end up in charge of purchasing at your biggest customer—as my mother used to say, “Don’t shiitake where you eat.”

3. Look in the Mirror. Ideally, the situation should have never come to this. You should have hired the right person. You should have set and communicated the right goals. You should have provided course corrections. Some of the “fault” probably belongs to you. It’s too late for the case at hand, but it’s not too late to prevent this from happening again, so take a good, long look in the mirror.

About the Author
Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Forbes.com. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. where he was one of the individuals responsible for the success of the Macintosh computer. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Related Topics: Employee Relations, Leadership, Small Business    3 Comments