The Ultimate List of Interview Questions

Growth at any company is directly correlated to the talent it acquires. Your interview with a potential candidate is your window to get to know these individuals and ask the kind of questions that will get you the information you need to make your decision. If you’re looking to interview with a fine-tooth comb, check out some of these interviewing pointers from these industry professionals:

1. What kind of workplace do you see yourself thriving in?

This is a great question to see whether or not a candidate will mesh well with your company’s culture. You will get a glimpse into what kind of workplace values they appreciate and how you can help them grow within the company. You can assess here whether they might fit better in a different role or department depending on how they answer. It will also get them talking about their former positions, so it can be an effective question to start with.

Jacob Dayan, CEO, and Co-Founder of Community Tax

2.   If you are offered more than one job, how will you decide which one to accept?

Asking about what criteria a candidate considers when accepting or declining a job offer can tell you a lot about their motivation. This question gives a chance for the candidate to explain what their career goals are and what they are looking for in a job. The answer will also help uncover how a potential employee might be motivated on the job and whether they are a fit for your organization’s culture.

Jeffery Pitrak, Marketing and Account Manager at Transient Specialists

3. How will you help us realize our company mission?

By asking this, you can uncover how much a candidate has researched your company as well as how interested they are in the position. This question can also grant them the opportunity to talk about what skills they believe are valuable to them as a candidate and strengths they utilized in former roles. At the end of the day, an interview is designed to get to know a possible employee, so this question can help show a few skill sets that they can offer.

Jason Brandt, Customer Success Director at Podopolo

4. How well do you think you can adapt to using different platforms to communicate?

With the large number of people working remotely nowadays, it is very likely that the interview process will be done over the internet as well. One of the first things an interviewer should do is assess the interviewee’s ability to navigate the digital world. Asking questions such as, how comfortable do you feel working remotely? How well do you think you can adapt to using different platforms to communicate? An employee's ability to use a computer is crucial as they will most likely be using many different applications throughout the day and need to use them without any problems in order to make sure they do their job properly.

Rich Rudzinski, Founder and Technical Strategist for Oversight.co and Tragic Media

5. What is something you have accomplished that makes you proud?

During the interview, it is crucial to get to know your candidate as more than just a potential employee. Therefore, you should aim to ask questions that spotlight their personality, interpersonal skills, and more. Here are three great questions you can utilize within your next interview:

• What is something you have accomplished that makes you proud? And Why?
• How would you handle miscommunication with another person?
• What are two big goals you have in your life?

Implementing these questions will allow your interviewee to think more about personal experiences and skills. This will also give you a chance to learn more about their personality, what motivates them, how they respond, and how they could potentially work for your company.

Aaron McWilliams, Director of Marketing at 1Dental

6. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

A job candidate with long-term goals and a professional drive is very valuable. Striving to find someone who is always thinking about what they do performance-wise now can have a positive effect on their future career path. This answer can show how a candidate's long-term career goals align with your company’s goals. Look to find someone who gives a detail-oriented answer instead of keeping it general and vague. It is important to find a candidate who has an interest in advancing with their career objectives and sees tons of opportunities to grow within your company. This will ensure they will be happy in the long run.

Megan Jones, Community Outreach Manager for NutraSweet Natural

7. Why do you want to work for our company?

This allows applicants to demonstrate their knowledge of your company and its core values. Find out what applicants know about the position, and what type of work they expect to perform. Are they looking for a better work-life balance? Do they want to work remotely? What are their work schedule expectations? Asking these questions puts their expectations, and yours, on the table for everyone to see. This is also the time to ask about their qualifications, certifications, and work history, including how long they worked at previous jobs. You may also want to ask whether their current employer knows they're looking for a new job.

Chris Hunter, Director of Customer Relations for ServiceTitan

8. Give me an example of a time you did something wrong. What did you learn from it?

This has less to do with the situation itself, and more about your own professionalism, personality, and problem-solving skills. Everyone makes mistakes on the job - this question gives the interviewer a very in-depth look at who the candidate is and what they’re like as a worker. Interviewers want to see what the candidate learned from the mistake and how they pivoted away from it, to make sure they don’t make the same mistake again. Obviously, it’s important, to be honest when answering this question, but it’s also essential to be able to turn your mistake into something positive and shows that you’re a better candidate because of it.

Adrian Pereira, Co-Founder of Eco Pea Co.

9. Tell me about a time where you didn’t agree with a decision made at work?

You want to know what it would be like for your current employees to work with the candidate you’re interviewing. A behavioral question such as this one allows you to get the candidate to start speaking about past work experiences, and how the candidate communicated during these situations. You are looking for how they communicate during a disagreement, and less with how the disagreement was solved. How a person handles a disagreement can speak volumes and is especially important when it comes to communicating with one another in the workplace. Disagreements are bound to happen, so what someone does when they arise is just as important to know. A question like this also gives insight into how the candidate treats those in their company who are in authority. To keep a workplace running smoothly, you need to ensure that your employees have a solid relationship with those in authority.

Kate Lipman, Sales & Marketing Consultant at Embrace

10. How would you describe your work style?

This is a very standard question that allows you to imagine how the candidate will be in their role in your company. This question can also give you an insight into how they will fit in with the culture of your team and can help you gauge if they have the right traits to fit in with your company. Understanding the style at which the candidate works will give you an idea of their knowledge of the industry, the skills they believe stick out the most for them, and an idea of the level of self-awareness they have. This is also a great question to get a glimpse of the candidate’s overall attitude and work ethic. A good candidate would show that they’re able to listen to feedback and instructions while keeping calm under pressure.

Brandon, Product Management Lead at Deputy

11. What isn’t on your resume?

Most times candidates will tailor their resumes to fit the position they’re applying to. By asking them if there’s anything they want to share that isn’t on their resume you will learn which other skills the candidate might have, even if they’re not directly applied to the position they’re applying to. Sometimes you might even be able to find them a better fit within the company once you learn a little bit more about their skills, hobbies, and passions.

Daniel Ward, Editor at Invoice2go

12. Do you work best alone or on a team?

This question can help you decide if your candidate is a good fit for the position they are applying for. If they are applying for a position that requires lots of solo work to be done but they work best in a team, you have the wrong candidate for the job. This also allows you to describe the ins and outs of the position so you can give the candidate a look into the day-to-day responsibilities they would be taking on. The bottom line is that by learning about their preferred working environment, both you and the candidate can decipher if they would be a good match for the position.

Himanshu Agarwal, SVP of Solutions for WorkBoard

13. Describe a situation of struggle and success?

Asking an interviewee, ‘when was a time you struggled during a project/work, but you found a solution to push through and get it done?’, is very simple, yet can be extremely informative based on how they answer. First, check to see if the answer they give relates to the position they are interviewing for. Next, evaluate how and what they were struggling with to get a good idea of what challenges this interviewee may have in the future. The most important aspect of this question and answer to pay attention to, and make sure they have a solid answer on, is how this person saw what was wrong, how they acknowledged the problem, and in what way did they overcame the problem with effective results. This question can give you a good idea of how the interviewee tackles issues under pressure and whether or not they have the proper mindset to keep pushing through problems that happen in everyday work life!

Alex Bell, Outreach Specialist at 1-800-Pack-Rat

14. What are you passionate about?

As an interviewer, we know that you are human and want to actually get to know who you are as a person better. This is one of those questions where an interviewee really gets to showcase their true self during an interview. So, what we as interviewers look for is authenticity when answering the question. Bonus points if what you’re passionate about aligns directly with your career field and the line of work that you’re interviewing for. This helps us see what candidate stands out above the others and would really be a great fit for the team going forward.

Brandon Brown, CEO of GRIN

15. Tell us about a challenge you overcame in the workplace

It is important for us to know that our employees can overcome challenges and learn from them. Honesty and self-recognition are important characteristics we seek out while hiring. We look for both emotional and practical responses to setbacks, and their ability to acknowledge them. The typical way we would recommend interviewees respond to this question is by addressing the situation they were in, addressing the task that was required, defining the actions they took, what worked what didn’t work, and summarizing what they learned throughout their challenge and how that will frame the future of their working tendencies.

Tom Mumford. Co-Founder of Undergrads LLC

16. What is your work style?

As an interviewer, we look for candidates that are self-aware. We look for answers where the interviewee can speak to their personal qualities and apply those to the qualifications and characteristics we are looking for. It is important to avoid the clichés and answer with “I am a hard worker” or a perfectionist. Instead, we look for honest answers about organization and management styles, providing experience-backed insights. We also recommend that upon hire, the new employee take a work style quiz that highlights their responses to situations so their boss knows how best to communicate and encourage their new hire.

Sanem Ahearn, Head of Marketing at Colorescience

By effectively planning for an interview, you can ensure you will have the information you need about a candidate in order to make your decision. The ideal interview not only will give you the information you need, but inform the candidate on the position, the company culture and values. With these tips, you’ll be onboarding your next new team member in no time.