Today, most businesses are beginning to acknowledge that finding the right candidate isn’t just about ensuring they have a specific set of skills and qualifications. Assessing cultural fit is also a crucial part of the process – identifying whether that person is going to assimilate well into the business and the team. If you’re not used to focusing on this then these are the key questions to ask.
- What kind of culture or environment brings out the best in you and enables you to perform at your optimum level?
- What management style do you prefer to experience and why – and how – does this have the most positive effect on you?
- Describe the person you believe was your best boss – what skills, abilities and characteristics did they have?
- What do you think businesses need to do to make the most of the capacity that employees have for going the extra mile? How do you think managers can encourage this additional use of energy?
- Are you a team player? How much time do you like to spend working alone and how much with others?
- How do you think the other people that you work with would describe the position that you naturally tend to take within a team?
- How would you sell the best bits of your existing – or most recent – job?
- What is the role of a manager when it comes to the team that they are in charge of? How can they help employees to be at their most productive?
- What is your opinion on workplace friendships – do you have them, do you think they are a good idea?
- What one thing do you need most in the workplace to be happy and productive? When you were answering that question what were the other two top factors involved?
- Let’s talk about a situation in which you recently made a customer really happy.
- If we asked other people in the team about how you work and what you contribute what would they say?
- Looking at the leadership of a business where you’d be happy and productive, what are the top three expectations you’d have of those in charge?
- Tell us about a situation in which you went beyond the call of duty to make a customer happy.
- Where do you usually position yourself as part of a team in terms of the different roles that everyone plays?
- What kind of relationship do you like to have with the people you work with on a day-to-day basis?
- How would reporting staff members describe the relationship that they have with you – what do you think they’d like to change if they could?
- What recent decision have you made that was motivated purely by customer need?
These questions can be asked in any order and will reveal a lot about a candidate’s values and how they are likely to fit in with your business’ culture.
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