In the hiring kickoff meeting as described in the how to get your team involved article, one of the main areas you'll to focus on is:

What questions should I ask?

Discuss the most important traits, skills, experience, etc. that you want a candidate to have.

Not only should this be incorporated into your job advertisements, but it will also form the basis for your interview questions.

If you’re struggling with where to begin, here are some prompts that can help you:

• What skills and/or experience are critical in order to do the job?
• What are important characteristics of someone who will be successful in this role?

Questions that help you assess how a candidate stacks up against this criteria are the ones that you’ll find to be most helpful at this stage of the hiring process.

It’s also important to take into account several best practices:

• Avoid yes/no questions: These can be asked your job application as knockout questions instead
• Don’t ask too many questions: On average, most customers ask 6 so we typically suggest a range of 4-7 depending on the role.
• Start with easier questions and work your way to difficult questions: Think of this as warming up the candidate. Ask lighter, culture-fit questions at the start and more difficult or technical questions later.

So, let’s look at an example scenario in which you want to ask 6 questions.

We’d suggest aligning your questions with these buckets:

• What’s needed to do the job? (3 questions)
• What are important characteristics of someone who will be successful in this role? (2 questions)
• What motivates the person? (1 question)
  • Do they get the job?
  • Do they want the job?

This format will give you a well-rounded view on the candidate and how they address the most important aspects of the job.