Recruiting is hard enough! Why are adding an extra step?

I get it. But calm down.

This is 30 minutes up front, that will literally save you hours of unnecessary interviews. Not only that, but it could save you months of pain and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In short, we are looking beyond (or behind) the tasks in the job description, to get clear on what would actually make someone great.

Once completed you should be clear on the most important questions to ask and the types of stories or responses you’re hoping to hear from your top candidates.

Done well, this will speed up the interview process, reduce bias, simplify decision making and improve the quality of people you bring into your company. Down the line it will also reduce the stress and hassle of managing underperformance, improve the culture of your company, and increase employee loyalty and engagement.

And as a bonus… each time you do this, the process will get faster and clearer, because you will already know a lot of the answers. But that doesn’t mean you. stop doing it…

Pre-Interview Preparation Questions

Question Your Response
1. Who are or have been your best ever employees (in any role)? And who are the best employees to ever perform this role? Try to list 3-4 names.
2. What specific technical skills or experience did these people have that set them apart from the rest?
3. What personal characteristics did these people display (attitude, personality, leadership, problem solving, or a particular way they approached their work) that set them apart from the rest? List everything that comes to mind.
4. Of the things listed above, what are the top 3 traits that will make someone excel? These might be common themes, or things that clearly moved the needle.
5. How will we test candidates to determine if they have specialist technical skills/experience? What questions could we ask? What test could we get them to complete?
6. What questions can we ask to understand their character traits? What stories are we hoping to hear from them?
BONUS QUESTIONS
7. What type of company would we need to be, and what things would we need to offer to attract these type of people? This could be meaningful work, money, opportunity, growth, flexibility, autonomy, latest technology etc.
8. Of the things we’ve identified in Q6, what of those things can we honestly say we offer? And what stories can we tell the candidates in the interview to communicate those benefits?

An Editable Version

Link to editable Google Doc

Tips on Completing the Pre-Interview Questionnaire:

  1. Run this as a single meeting, including key stakeholders… not ALL stakeholders.
  2. Question 1: If this is a completely new role, or you don’t have employees that you want to model from, create a persona of your ideal person. Give them a name and a backstory.
  3. Question 2: You’re starting from the point that all candidates should meet the basic criteria to be able to do the job. So here, you’re looking for specialist technical skills, maybe it’s experience working in a specific industry, delivery of a specific project or solution, knowledge of particular platforms or tools (e.g. AI)
    1. This may not always be applicable or a deciding factor that you choose to test for.
  4. Question 3: Try to get as specific as possible. If you start using broad terms like positive attitude, ask “What specifically did they do (or not do) that made people think they had a positive attitude?”. You’ll find that it will often be smaller things like how they greeted people, or they always sought out opportunities to help others.