Crafting the best interview questions

One of the top areas I often get asked when running interviewer training is, but what questions should we be asking?

This is a key part to interviews. As the interviewer it is your role to ask questions. And make sure that the questions you are ask are relevant and get you what you need to assess in the best way.

So how do you build a great list of interview questions?

Let me walk you through step by step guide in how to build great interview questions.

Tips for building interview questions

Within this section I will covering behavioural, competency and situational based questions to be included within your question bank. Having a mix of all three will help you with better results.

1. Start with the Job Description: The job description should be your best friend. It will contain all the information that you need to start thinking of interview questions. Look at behaviours or skills that you need for the role. Pull this into a list, this will be your basis for starting to understand what you need to be asking.

2. Research: In today’s world there are so many free resources available online or even using AI to help. Start with looking at question banks online or even use this prompt for ChatGPT to help:

   • I am hiring for X role and need the following core skills or behaviours [INSERT BEHAVIOURS]. Please provide me a list of interview questions I should be asking candidates during the interview process

3. Review: Just pulling interview questions into a document or scorecard and asking them, isn’t going to be a great result. You will need to review the questions and make sure these will get you the information you need to make decisions about the candidates skill or experiences. They need to ensure that they align with the requirement of the role. Again your job description will help here. It should guide you through the right questions to be asking.

4. Testing & Feedback: It is worth speaking with team members to review and look at the questions. Get them to provide feedback on whether these get to the answers / right information. It is also recommended to review these with the interview team. Make sure they have all read and been briefed on the job description.

5. Iterate: Continuously update and edit these, questions will become meaningless or not relevant over time. Make sure you review these and edit to keep these up to date and most relevant.

Common errors

There are some errors that people make when building interview questions that you really need to avoid are:

1. Vague: The questions should not be vague. They should be clear and help you get the information that you need to assess the candidates. If the questions don’t add any value or understanding then its something that you should drop.

2. Complex: The questions are complex or confusing. Questions need to be focussed and simple. They should focus on getting the outcomes you need. If you or someone doesn’t understand the question or what is expected with the answer, then chances are this shouldn’t be used.

3. Forgetting Legal Implications: Understand that there will be some questions you can ask and others you can’t. And these will vary depending on where people are based. Make sure you are up to date on the right laws and how this applies to interview questions.

4. Leading Questions: You shouldn’t have leading questions. These are questions that lead candidates to a certain answer. This will have a negative impact on outcomes. You will be leading the candidate to answer that you are looking for vs looking at seeing how the candidates fit for the role

How do you know if the question is any good?

Once you have built the interview questions how do you ensure that they are any good? Is there such a thing as a bad interview? Is there such a thing as a bad question?

For me personally as long as the questions focus on:

• The requirements for the role; do they allow you to get what you need from the overall assessment of the role

• Allows you to get the information you need from the candidates

• Are simple and clear. Meaning easy for the candidate to understand

• Ability to assess a couple of behaviours / skills is always an advantage

The final part to consider is what other people say and the feedback from the candidates. It may well be worth looking at running some role play scenarios with the questions to help you understand how the questions land in an interview format.

Building Interview Question Banks

One of the best things you can do is to build out an interview question bank. These can be helpful when you are looking at building your interviews and helps the interview teams select the right question easily. This will save you time from having to consistently build out interview questions for all the roles.

You may find it useful to group this under behaviour or skill and start to cover what a good and bad answer looks like. Aligning these to the company values will be really helpful and ensure consistency across the company.

I hope this article was useful in helping you start to think through how best to craft your own interview questions.

If you enjoyed this article then ensure that you check out my other content:

• Looking to improve as an interviewer or need help training your team, check out my interviewer training course

• Want me to help in other Recruiting or HR areas, book a call here