Key takeaways

  • Companies use a formal interview process to stick within tight hiring timelines, but this rush to hire can also lead to unconscious bias and make it harder to find a truly qualified candidate.
  • To avoid the bias trap, create a more inclusive work environment, and find the right candidate for their job, interviewers should rely on a mix of situational, behavioral, technical, and culture-add interview questions.
  • Hiring teams should also strive to make the interview process as transparent as possible, using expert techniques like shareable scoring rubrics, accommodation menus, and user-friendly systems.

I’ve been researching and writing for the HR tech industry for the last four years, specifically focusing on how companies create more employee-centric work experiences. Not only have I worked closely with HR practitioners and experts over the past few years, but I’ve also worked in an organizational setting on the employee side. I’ve spent time in environments where employers prioritized their people and those where they haven’t, and I’ve witnessed first-hand how powerful it is when company leaders emphasize the employee experience as much as they do growth—and when they develop their processes within that guiding philosophy.

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Top 32 interview questions to ask candidates

The average time-to-hire across industries in 2024 is around 44 days from job posting to the candidate’s offer acceptance. That’s likely propelled by the fact that recruitment teams are under tight deadlines when filling open positions, even if they use contemporary strategies like social recruiting to increase their candidate pool. 

However, the focus on sticking to a short timeline can pull focus from what really matters during the interview process: effectively evaluating candidates for a role and limiting the chance for unconscious bias. 

That’s why I suggest using the following questions as a framework for getting started. Be sure to adapt to the questions to your specific company and industry.

Situational questions

Situational questions help you assess how the candidate responds to a hypothetical situation. Try to keep these prompts as relevant to the actual role as possible so you can give the candidate a more detailed picture of the role’s day-to-day.

  1. Imagine you’re leading a project that’s falling behind schedule. How would you handle the situation? This question assesses the candidate’s prioritization and project management skills, as well as their ability to solve problems under pressure.
  2. Suppose a client is unhappy with a product or service we’ve provided. What would you do?  Discover how the candidate behaves in client-facing situations in addition to their problem-solving skills.
  3. If you were given a task outside of your area of expertise, how would you approach it? This tests the candidate’s adaptability and willingness to learn when faced with an unfamiliar challenge.
  4. What would you do if you were tasked with implementing a new process you believe is flawed? See how well or how often the candidate exercises critical thinking skills and if they can constructively challenge new ideas.
  5. If you realized a mistake in your work had negatively impacted the team’s results, what would you do? This is designed to test the candidate’s integrity and explore how well the candidate can take accountability.
  6. Imagine you’ve been asked to give a presentation on a topic you’re not entirely familiar with. How would you prepare? I encourage you to make this question as specific as possible for your industry or company. This helps you identify the candidate’s research skills and ability to learn quickly.
  7. If you were assigned to lead a team where one member is consistently underperforming, how would you address it? Get a better understanding of the candidate’s approach to performance management and ability to provide constructive feedback.
  8. Imagine if you have conflicting deadlines for two important projects. How would you handle that? Discover how the candidate communicates and manages expectations, as well as their prioritization skills.

Behavioral questions

It’s easy to confuse behavioral questions with situational questions, but here’s the main difference: Behavioral questions tend to focus on scenarios in the past, while situational questions tend to be hypothetical “what ifs” designed to see how the candidate can think on their feet. Use these nine behavioral questions to encourage the interviewee to think critically about how their previous work experience has impacted them as a professional today.

  1. Talk about a time when you were asked to do something you had never done before. How did you respond?  This question helps interviewers assess how well the candidate does outside of their comfort zone and how open they are to learning from failure.
  2. Describe a time when you had to adapt to rapidly changing technology or industry trends. What was your approach? This is extremely relevant with the recent explosion of AI, but it also invites the candidate to demonstrate their industry knowledge.
  3. Can you share an example of a project where you had to collaborate with a cross-functional team? This tests the candidate’s ability to work with diverse stakeholders and understand how their work contributes to a greater whole.
  4. Can you talk about a time when you were communicating with a team member and they didn’t understand you? If you’re hiring for a managerial role, this type of question is particularly important as it helps you assess how the candidate adapts to different communication styles.
  5. Can you describe a time when your manager wasn’t around, and a pressing problem arose? This is key to understanding the candidate’s ability to rise to the occasion and fill a manager’s shoes.
  6. Can you tell me about a time when a coworker came to you with concerns about your team’s processes? This gives you a sense of how well the candidate functions and communicates as part of a team.
  7. Can you share a situation when you had to work under a tight deadline? This helps you assess the candidate’s prioritization skills.
  8. When was the last time you had to delegate an important task? See how the candidate communicates instructions, deadlines, and expectations, as well as how ready they are to answer clarifying questions.

Technical questions

These questions aim to determine a candidate’s knowledge of the hard skills needed for the open role. For instance, a payroll specialist might be asked about how shift differentials affect overtime calculations, an HR specialist might be asked about measuring employee engagement, and a nurse might be asked to interpret doctor’s notes and codes. I tried to keep these questions non-specific so you can apply them to virtually any role.

  1. How do you keep your technical skills current?  This is a broad question, but it helps you assess how invested the candidate is in their own development.
  2. Can you describe a troubleshooting process you’d follow for a crashing program? This is a key question for software engineers and developers who are so often tasked with problem-solving in a crisis.
  3. What is your field of expertise, and what would you like to learn more about? Here, the candidate should talk specifically about the technologies, innovations, trends, or world events that will impact their role in the future.
  4. Can you talk about a time when you had to explain something technical to a non-technical audience? See how well the interviewee can communicate and collaborate with a cross-functional team that isn’t entirely composed of technically skilled professionals.
  5. How would you troubleshoot an issue with a process or system that’s currently in use? For instance, you can test the software developer’s understanding of debugging techniques that don’t disrupt active systems. However, you can also adapt this question to any role requiring candidates to think more strategically.
  6. Have you implemented improvements to an existing process? What were they, and how did you implement them? This helps you understand candidate initiative and their own process for suggesting and making improvements to company procedures or systems.
  7. Where do you place most of your focus when reviewing someone else’s work? This question can test job-specific knowledge as well as prioritization abilities and attention to detail.
  8. How do you handle tight deadlines? See how well the candidate works within the constraints of the agile or scrum frameworks, which help them push projects over the line more efficiently.

Culture-add questions

A solid company culture is the engine that drives collaboration and facilitates healthy work experiences, which is why it’s so important to include culture-related questions in an interview. Still, it’s important to be clear about your intentions for asking these questions. If you’re looking for a culture fit only, you’re looking for a candidate whose beliefs, behaviors, and values align with those of your organization, and that can stifle diversity. That’s why it’s important to expand beyond culture-fit questions to assess if the candidate is a culture add, someone who brings new perspectives and enriches the culture with diverse and new ideas. 

  1. What does your ideal work environment look like? This prompts the candidate to talk about work style preferences, team dynamics, and their philosophy on leadership and management.
  2. How do you prefer to be managed? Invite the candidate to be a bit more specific about positive experiences they’ve had with managers in the past.
  3. What attracts you to our company? Rather than expecting the candidate to give you the “right” answer here, approach this question with genuine curiosity. Assess how deeply the candidate thinks about what they can bring to the table.
  4. Which aspects of our culture resonate with you? Encourage the candidate to explore your company values on their own terms.
  5. How do you collaborate with individuals who have different perspectives? If the candidate shows excitement about working with a diverse team, that’s a good sign.
  6. What distinctive viewpoints can you contribute to our team? This invites the interviewee to be more direct about how they can impact your team culture.
  7. Describe a situation where you challenged the status quo. What was the result? See how the interviewee talks about values like innovation, critical thinking, and being proactive in their communication.
  8. How would you contribute to making our workplace more inclusive? It’s important the candidate is thinking about how they can improve on your current culture, especially if they’re interviewing for a managerial position.

Breaking down bias: Why strategic interview questions matter 

I understand why recruitment stakeholders want to make the job interview process feel like an informal conversation. It puts the candidate at ease and encourages them to speak more honestly and extemporaneously, gently urging them to think on their feet, which is an essential soft skill. While the intention is admirable, this informal interview practice is a breeding ground for bias. Let’s break down how that looks in practice with a few statistics:

  • Research from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology found that employers have a tendency to overemphasize “gut instinct,” putting too much stock in their ability to evaluate a candidate based on a casual, unstructured conversation. 
  • 42% of women say they’ve encountered gender-biased or inappropriate questions during a job interview, and 41% of women said they’ve felt discriminated against due to gender, according to a report from Muse and RecruitmentMarketing.com. 
  • In the Unpacking Name-Based Race Discrimination study of all 50 U.S. states, researchers found that candidates with names perceived as Black were less likely to even get an interview, highlighting how strong a role bias can play even at the application screening stage.

That’s why I recommend “sticking to a script” by using a structured hiring technique. It keeps your biggest priority front and center—hiring a candidate who’ll excel in the role, regardless of their personal background. Putting a list of strategic interview questions also makes it easier to loop other stakeholders in the process so they can help you, the interviewer, develop questions that truly test the candidate based on skills, not the character or physical traits that are out of their control.

An infographic showing the most common interview questions asked.
Generic questions like these make it harder to assess how well the candidate will actually perform within your company’s unique context. Source: HR Future.

The best interview practices, according to experts

Structured interviews are vital to combating bias and making the interview process more efficient. But how can you get the best candidates energized about working for your company and attract top talent? Follow these expert practices:

An interview rubric is a systematic framework used to evaluate candidates during the hiring process. It provides a standardized set of criteria and a rating scale to assess candidates’ skills and qualifications. Many companies may create a scoring rubric that they share internally, but few actually share it with the candidates.

“Every first interview for headcount365, I share our internal interview rubric with the candidate,” shares headcount365’s co-founder and CEO Eric Giudice on LinkedIn. “They now know what competencies we are looking for and what the “yes” is for each one. When every candidate knows the rubric, we can focus our evaluation on the quality and relevance of the answers.” If you’re wondering when to share the rubric, I recommend sending it an email ahead of the first interview, which gives the candidate plenty of time to learn your scoring process and prepare accordingly.

This is a suggestion from Katie Bach, a former nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has spent most of her career focused on job creation, access, and quality. This “menu” can include options like providing extra time for completing tasks or responding to interview questions, presenting questions in different formats to address different learning styles, or conducting remote interviews for candidates who may have mobility challenges. If you choose to create this menu as a shareable resource, I suggest sharing this before the first interview alongside your scoring rubric.

It’s not a bad thing if your company values alignment in all decision-making, but it could be harming your interview process if you’re asking candidates to sit through more than two interviews. Plus, it can mean losing out on great talent.

“Making the process cumbersome gives another company that has streamlined its process the ability to ‘cherry-pick’ the best folks,” says Ginny Rey, VP of people development at TCG Player for SHRM. “It also tells the candidate that the company values consensus, which can be good, but it can also mean the company has issues making decisions and taking action.” This is why I suggest investing in recruitment software if you haven’t already. The right software allows you to orchestrate and automate the entire process from beginning to end, notifying your candidates about their status every step of the way and keeping all candidates sorted in a clearly organized KanBan board or visual pipeline for improved hiring efficiency.

You don’t want to intimidate or overwhelm the candidate, of course. But it’s a good practice to have at least two people lead the interviews, and at least one of them should be someone who works on the team the candidate is applying to join.

“If there is only one interview and it is with HR, this can be a red flag, especially if the job is not in HR,” says Cheryl L. Mason, relational leadership expert and CEO of Catalyst Leadership Management for Newsweek. I’ve found in my experience that this practice also allows the candidate to gather more insight into the role, especially if you include a relevant supervisor or department head who can answer their questions in greater detail.

Be prepared for the next time you screen candidates. Learn from this comprehensive guide on How to Conduct a Job Interview.

Interview questions FAQs

When it’s time to close the interview, but you don’t want to do it too abruptly, you can ask these wrap-up questions:

  • When would you be available to start if offered the position?
  • Do you have any questions for me?
  • Is there anything else you’d like us to know we haven’t covered?
  • What’s the best way to contact you about the next steps?

Once the candidate has asked all their questions, you can end the interview by explaining how the next phase in the interview process will go, letting the employee know when they can expect to hear from you. 

There are a few questions and topics that you should absolutely avoid, not only because they’re discriminatory and invasive, but they’re also illegal and in violation of historic laws and regulatory bodies like Title VII, the ADA, and the EEOC, to name a few.  That’s why you shouldn’t ask about the candidate’s:

  • Age or date of birth.
  • Marital status, family, or children.
  • Religion.
  • Race, ethnicity, or national origin.
  • Gender or sexual orientation.
  • Salary history (which is illegal in some states).
  • Arrest record or felon status.
  • Citizenship or immigration status.
  • Physical appearance, medical history, or disabilities.

It’s best to spend at least a few hours to a day ahead of the interview to prepare effectively. In particular, you should spend your time:

  • Reviewing the candidate’s resume and application materials.
  • Researching the candidate’s background.
  • Carefully re-reading the job description.
  • Developing targeted questions.
  • Drafting a few broader culture-add questions.
Marta Gomez-Taylor Avatar
Marta Gomez-Taylor
HR Tech Expert
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Marta is a TechnologyAdvice contributor who has been covering advances in HR tech for the last few years. She’s passionate about exploring people-first technology and practices that genuinely make work more enjoyable for employees, and she enjoys covering any meaningful, sustainable software innovations intended to make the world a better place.