My Favorite Interview Questions

I have conducted thousands of interviews over my years as a marketing leader. As my teams know, I'm an avid Evernote user, and my "Recruiting" Evernote folder at Formlabs alone had 462 notes in it when I left! And that just covers the four and a half years I worked at Formlabs, out of a career spanning more than twenty five years of managing people.

Over my years of interviewing people, I've developed a pretty standard approach to interviewing. While different roles require digging into different skills and experiences, I think it is important to have a consistent approach, especially when you are interviewing multiple people for the same role.

This post will outline my favorite three questions - why I ask them, and what I look for in responses.

Question 1: "What questions do you have?"

I always start every interview by asking the candidate what questions they have for me. This often takes candidates off guard as they expect that at the end rather than the start, but I learn a lot about a candidate by the questions they ask. I also find that I tailor what subsequent questions I ask them, and we end up having a more natural, free-flowing conversation.

Over the years, I've seen a pattern of 3 responses to this question:

1. "Let me tell you about me first." Often very junior, unprepared, or nervous candidates hear my question and immediately say "sure - but first, let me tell you about me." Needless to say, I don't like this answer - if I wanted to learn about them first, I would have started the interview there. To me this shows either a lack of interest in the position (and thus treating this interview like a formality or rote exercise) or, worse yet, an inability to follow simple directions and answer simple questions.
2. "I don't really have any questions." Some candidates will claim that they've done all their research, or that previous interviewers have answered all their questions. Or they'll just flat out say they don't have any questions for me! Either way, to me this also shows a lack of real interest in the position and the company. If you are seriously considering changing jobs and going to work for a company, you should have scores of questions - and should ask some of the most important questions to multiple people to see how consistent the answers are.
3. "Thank you - my first question is..." Well-prepared candidates will have a list of questions for each person they interview including some, per my previous point, that they ask multiple people. Some of the best interviews I've had are where we run out of time with the candidate just asking me questions. It really helps me understand what is important to the candidate, how they think about this role, and get a sense of their overall communication skills. I'll often interject questions in my responses and turn it into more of a conversation, but I almost always let candidates spend as much time as they want asking questions.

Interviews are more important and impactful for candidates than for the hiring company. In most situations, you have multiple people on your team, but each of them only has one job. Great candidates should recognize that and ask a lot of good questions.

Question 2: Passion

Every role has its requirements and desired skills and background, and part of the interview process should be spent testing and understanding how a candidate's skills line up with that. That can come during resume screening, questioning, or during a project or presentation phase. But simply understanding if someone can do a task isn't the same as understanding if someone likes doing a task. And wouldn't you rather hire someone who actually likes and wants to do the role you are hiring for?

Thus, I always ask candidates to think about a time in their recent past when they were most passionate and excited about their work. The proverbial "I can't wait to get out of bed and get to work today!" Some people may roll their eyes at the idea that a job can be that stimulating, but there have to be moments when everyone has more affinity - and maybe even passion - for the work they are doing. I ask them to describe that task or activity - not only what it was, but why they liked it so much. Even if the role you are hiring for doesn't have that exact same responsibility, this can help you understand if the the day to day responsibilities of this role are likely to motivate the employee to do their best work.

I also like to expand this question to understand their passions outside of work. What activities do they like to do when they aren't working. This brings out more of the human side of candidates and often leads to connections back to the sort of work environment they thrive in, or tasks they are best suited for.

Question 3: Superpower

And finally, one of my favorite questions - and one that has become the source of a lot of banter among people I've hired and recruiters I've worked with: "what is your superpower?" I picked this question up from a fellow Boston marketing leader at a MassTLC CMO roundtable many years ago and it has become my go-to closing question.

By this point in the interview, we've usually settled into a more casual conversation and we've both gotten a sense on the potential fit. I've gone through role-specific questions, and hopefully answered a lot of their questions. I likely have a good sense as to whether they'll move forward or not, but I always like ending with this question to see where it takes us.

Over the years I've heard a lot of different answers to this question. Some people unfortunately jump to a very tactical skill aligned with the role, like that they are an "Asana guru" or have, as one web developer candidate said, "an uncanny ability to remember URL structures." Of the more thoughtful answers, empathy is probably the most common, followed by other solid answers like dependability, GSD, adaptability, creative problem solving, emotional intelligence, collaboration, etc. These are all good answers - and help me understand how applicable this "superpower" is to the role at hand. The question also just helps me get to know them a bit more as a person.

Over the years, a couple answers in particular have stood out to me:

• "I enjoy making things uncomfortable" - this came from a candidate we moved internally from services to the Formlabs marketing team who said they really enjoy poking at things and asking why, especially when they were up against the classic "we do it because that's the way we've always done it" mentality. I really liked that answer, and they went on to be a great addition to the marketing team - clearly leaving their mark challenging and improving how we accomplished our goals.
• "I'm like a duck in the water" - another events candidate said she was like a duck in the water - calm at the surface with feet moving rapidly. She said outward appearances are critical so that people have confidence in your ability to handle the situation, but that she is constantly problem solving and making sure fires don't get out of control. Great for someone managing complex events!
• "I'm great at everything I do" - by contrast I had a product marketing candidate answer the question by telling me that he was great at everything he did (thus effectively saying that he had limitless superpowers). When pressed, he didn't enumerate specific skills or areas - just that anything he did was great. That interview process didn't go far...

"What's your scandal?"

While we are talking about favorite questions, I'll also share one of the most unusual questions I've been asked in an interview. Recently I was talking to a company and the CEO posed the following scenario to me: "You've been caught up in a scandal - why?"

I'm usually pretty quick on my feet with most interview questions, but this one definitely left me flummoxed for a few minutes before I mumbled something about likely being some sort of issue with hiring or termination practices, purely based on the amount of hiring I've done, and the size of teams I've managed over my career. Even after that interview, I return to that question in my mind every once in a while, second guessing what I said and trying to figure out what a "good" answer would have been! Any thoughts?

Summary

If you are building or leading a team, interviews are one of the most important jobs you have. Hire the right candidates, and your team will grow and thrive. Hire the wrong people, and you'll be back out looking for a replacement in months. Worse yet, you'll have wasted your time, and the time of everyone else who interacted with them. Nobody has a 100% hit rate in hiring, but having a consistent approach, and working with a great recruiting partner (shout out to the Talent Acquisition team at Formlabs!) can make a huge difference.

These are some of my favorite interview questions - what are yours?