Friday Microlearning

Creating Interview Questions

Goal

Create effective interview questions with a focus on work-related questions

that are harder to prepare for and to fake an answer to.
How to Create Effective Interview Questions

1. Choose the most important attributes (competencies/KSAs and experience) that are
required to be effective in the job for which you are interviewing.

2. Gather questions from each of the selected competencies to create your list of
interview questions.
How to Create Effective Interview Questions

Understand the job:

KSA and experience Behavioral Interview Patterned Interview: carefully selecting
relates to the essential and patterned questions and determining acceptable
functions interview
answers ahead of time greatly increases
chances of success

Behavioral Interview: focus on how

Committee’s applicants describe either past or anticipated
Objective, quantifiable
participation and
future behavior.
understanding
Identify the Criteria
Develop a clear position description that include essential functions, qualifications and experience but
don’t make it so specific that it inadvertently deters highly qualified applicants.

Think carefully about the qualifications listed, what is required and what is preferred. Define broad yet
clear criteria around the qualifications.

Get input/suggestion from a diverse interview committee (multiple perspectives). Include the ‘customer’
of the position to the committee.
Case Study: Identify Criteria
HR Specialist-Talent Acquisition
Essential Duties:
• Conduct life cycle recruiting to attract top talent: sourcing, screening, interviewing and offering.
• Review position descriptions to make sure the representative duties, knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) are
pertinent to the essential functions of the positions and remove any exclusionary language, artificial barriers,
unnecessary qualifications.
• Support managers through the applicant tracking system, workflows and related recruitment policies.
• Organize, and implement outreach efforts (college recruitment, diversity recruitment etc.).
• Develop and implement advertising and social media recruitment strategies
• Participate in salary survey and HR reports as needed.
• ......
Minimum Qualifications:
Any combination equivalent to: a Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Management,
Marketing, or related field and three years of in-house human resources experience some of which includes
recruiting and sourcing.
Case Study: Identify Criteria
HR Specialist-Talent Acquisition
Criteria
1. In house HR experience, with recruitment experience
2. Full cycle recruitment experience
3. Experience reviewing position descriptions
4. Experience with applicant tracking systems
5. Advertising and branding strategies
6. Outreaching skills
7. Compensation knowledge and data analysis/reporting experience
8. ……
Gather Questions (Templates/Samples)
 Google ‘Interview Questions’ and you will get thousands of samples, e.g.:
1. LinkedIn: 30 behavioral interview questions to assess soft skills
[Link]

2. SHRM
[Link]

 ChatGPT
Interview Questions For Student Success Counselor
[Link]

 Previous Search/ Similar Searches

Contact HR for more information.

 Committee members’ input

Behavioral/Situational Questions

1. Behavioral:
An interview technique that focuses on a candidate's past experiences, behaviors, knowledge, skills and abilities by
asking the candidate to provide specific examples of when he or she has demonstrated certain behaviors or skills as a
means of predicting future behavior and performance.

2. Situational:
An interview technique that gives the interviewee a hypothetical scenario and focuses on a candidate's past
experiences, behaviors, knowledge, skills and abilities by asking the candidate to provide specific examples of how
the candidate would respond given the situation described.
Behavioral/Situational Questions
Example: Problem-solving/Analysis

Behavioral
Describe a time when you were able to overcome a communications barrier(s).

Situational
Two members of a team do great work, but they do not work well together. What are some of the key
ways to get them to work together better?
Tips for Interview Questions That Result in Great Hires

1. Legality
2. ‘Fit’
3. Avoid easy-to-practice questions.
4. Assess their ability to solve a problem
5. Evaluate whether they’re forward-
looking
6. Assess a candidate’s ability to learn,
adapt, and innovate.
7. Be wary of historical questions
8. Avoid Duplication
Tips for Interview Questions That Result in Great Hires

1. Legality
 Marital status or children.
 ‘Ban-the box’.
 Outside activities or hobbies might indicate race.
 religion, national origin, sex, age, etc.
 Gender/sex.
 Languages, unless job requires a certain language fluency.
 Salary history.
 Education, if asking about graduation year.
 ‘Experience working with a group of female colleagues’.
 Creating implied employment contract.
Tips for Interview Questions That Result in Great Hires

3. Avoid easy-to-practice questions

 What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
 What is your dream job?
 Why are you the best candidate?

8. Be wary of historical questions

 Good experience years ago might be wrong answer today
 Good story teller
Tips for Interview Questions That Result in Great Hires

4. Assess their ability to solve a problem

Consider to ask them:
• Identify the problem on the job
• Solve a current problem.
• Identify the problem in our process

For example:
HR Specialist-Talent Acquisition:
• We lack of applicants for most of positions. Please walk us through the broad steps you would take in order to
solve the problem.
Tips for Interview Questions That Result in Great Hires

6. Assess a candidate’s ability to learn, adapt, and innovate.

Consider to ask them:
• Out line the steps you’d like to learn/take to adapt/increase innovation……

2. ‘FIT’.
• Not too easy, not too complicated; think of what the position really needs
• Not too specific, not too broad
• Not too long, not too short, 8-10 questions for a 40 minutes interview
• Avoid duplication
Case Study
HR Specialist-Talent Acquisition

1. Please give an overview of your education and professional development experiences related to the areas of
personnel selection, organizational development, classification, and compensation.
2. If you are hired to this position, please share the plan how you can learn the position and the community in
the first 3 to 6 months.
3. Describe your experience coaching hiring managers/search committees to develop interview criteria.
4. How would you improve our employment brand? Discuss your outreach/recruitment experience to attract a
diverse applicant pool.
5. Describe your experience reviewing Position Descriptions... what did you regard as the key issues to consider
and mistakes to avoid?
6. Explain a previous situation where you were working with an upset hiring manager. What was the problem at
hand, and how did you resolve the issue?
7. Tell us about any reports you have generated and how your determine their accuracy.
8. We lack of applicants for most of positions. Please walk us through the broad steps you would take in order to
solve the problem.