Creating Interview Questions

"The Key To Successful Interviews"

Creating interview questions is a skill you need to learn if you are going to be successful in your hiring. The majority of the data used to make the hiring decision comes from the interview. And, the data you get in the interview is totally dependent on the questions you ask.

Ask good interview questions and you get good data. And having good data is the fastest way to hire good people and avoid those costly hiring mistakes. Here's the good news:

"Creating Interview Questions Is Easy"

Creating interview questions is a simple 3-step process.

1. Identify the piece of data you need
2. Identify an opportunity the person had to demonstrate it
3. Create your question

Identify The Piece Of Data You Need

You always start the process by identifying the piece of data you need. Your list of critical job requirements should tell you exactly what you need to know about the person.

Pick a requirement and determine exactly what you need to know. If you were hiring a person for your phone sales team you might want to know if the person quickly establishes rapport over the phone.

You would want to know if the person works well as part of a team if you were hiring the person into a design team. You would want to know if the person pays attention to detail if you were hiring them into a data entry position.

Clearly identify what data you need by working through your list of critical job requirements.

Identify an opportunity the person had to demonstrate it

The next step in creating your interview questions is to work through the raw data you have on the candidate. This is usually an application and/or a resume. Look for situations where the person had the opportunity to demonstrate the sought after behavior.

Did they ever have the opportunity to establish rapport over the phone? Did they work as part of a team? How about an opportunity to demonstrate attention to detail?

At this point in your hiring process you should have a candidate pool that that has been screened and is at least in the ball park. (Checkout the article on employment screening ) Finding similar examples should not be very hard.

Work through the person's background and look for situations that are the same or similar to those on your job.

Create your questions

The final step is to put it all together and create your interview questions. Using the first example, you need to know if the person establishes rapport quickly over the phone. You see from their resume that they currently work in a telesales role. Your questions might be:

Who was the last new customer that you sold?

How did you get their attention on the phone?

What did you do to establish credibility with the person?

This one example generated 3 very good questions. You would certainly follow up on the questions as well. The goal is to get as much information about how the person acted in that particular situation.

In conclusion, creating interview questions does not need to be difficult or time consuming. Follow the simple 3-step process in this article and you will be hiring great new employees in no time flat. >

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