One of the most important aspects of a recruitment process is interviewing candidates to identify whether they fit the position requirements. In this regard, candidate interviewing becomes a pivotal process in the overall human resource management of the company since the success of the interview predetermines the consecutive steps in employing, developing, and promoting the candidate. In other words, a properly conducted interview might minimize company losses in terms of hiring practices and obtain the best talent for the organization. For that matter, an interviewer should be properly prepared for the interview, know the position requirements and job description, and be knowledgeable about the particularities of questioning and communicating with the candidates to retrieve the necessary implicit and explicit information to make a correct decision. Therefore, this answer is aimed at presenting several examples of interview questions and answers to them to illustrate how interviewing serves as a valuable source of information about a candidate.
Different types of questions might be helpful in handling the interview and obtaining truthful answers demonstrating the personality and competence particularities of a candidate. The versatility of questions is an important aspect of a qualitative interview for a job position since it allows for minimizing the risks of candidates’ fake answers. According to Melchers et al. (2020), faking at job interviews is a common phenomenon that is validated by candidates’ willingness to represent themselves from a better side to convince the employer of their worthiness of being hired. In the scholarly literature, faking is defined as “conscious distortions of answers to the interview questions in order to obtain a better score on the interview and/or create favorable perceptions” (Melchers et al., 2020, p. 124). Thus, to ensure that the interviewer receives the most relevant and truthful information about the candidate, one should ask several types of questions.
The first category of interview questions is situational ones, which imply the obtainment of information on the decision-making ability of a candidate in a hypothetical job-related situation. For the illustrative purposes of this assignment, a hypothetical interview with a candidate applying for sales associate will be crafted. Thus, possible situational questions within the scope of the interview might be as follows:
- How would you identify which product to offer to a customer with uncertain selection criteria?
- What would your decision-making strategy be if you were about to fail to meet a monthly quota in sales and had an unattended customer complaint? Which issue would you prioritize?
- What would you say, and what would your actions be if a customer accidentally damaged a product in the store?
The answers to these questions will demonstrate the level of a prospective employee’s competence in performing in difficult situations and their capability of maintaining professionalism. Moreover, the answer to these situational questions will illustrate how a candidate handles conflicts and dilemmas, unfolding their personal characteristics (Tappoon, 2022). Thus, both psychological and responsibility-related information might be retrieved from the candidate both implicitly and explicitly when asking the above-mentioned questions.
The second category of questions is the behavioral questions, which are aimed at identifying the past experiences of the employee pertaining to the current job position. Indeed, for the sales associate position, behavioral questions might be as follows:
- What is your most proud professional achievement throughout your experience in sales?
- Tell me about a time when you had to handle a challenging situation in your job related to managing communication with a difficult customer.
- How do you usually react and respond to negative feedback from a client?
The answers to these behavioral questions will allow an interviewer to collect information about the candidates’ prior experience and their ability to reflect and demonstrate the path of professional growth.
Finally, the third set of questions is one aimed at evaluating the candidate’s job knowledge. In particular, these questions might include the following:
- What is the proper way of operating a cash register?
- What actions and decisions will you make when there are too many customers in the store?
- How would you introduce and promote one of our company’s products to a customer with the aim of selling it to them?
The answers to these questions will demonstrate the candidates’ communicative skills and show their professional capacity (Tappoon, 2022). Although these questions are simple, the character and volume of answers might be evaluated for accuracy and clarity, which will signify the candidate’s competence and expertise.
When exemplifying good, average, and poor answers to one of these questions, one might speculate on the first behavioral question on the proudest job experience. A poor answer would be: “I do not recall any events in my professional experience that would make me proud.” An average answer would be: “In my career, I have always been proud of reaching sales levels higher than my coworkers.” Finally, a good answer to this question would be as follows: “I recall several particular moments in my professional life that I feel most proud of. However, the one that I would like to share is the challenging situation I managed to handle in my previous place of work. As we approached the end of the month, I understood that our department was at risk of not reaching the quota because we had many customers who bought only one or two items. In that situation, I shared an idea with the leadership, suggesting a discount for the products that had lacked customer demand for a long time, and I was pursuant to offering the discount to all customers. The monthly quota was reached, and I was promoted to a higher position.”
References
Melchers, K. G., Roulin, N., & Buehl, A. K. (2020). A review of applicant faking in selection interviews. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 28(2), 123-142.
Tappoon, A. (2022). A case study of communication strategies used by Thai business students in an English online job interview test. Asia Social Issues, 15(6), 1-16.