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Interview Questions to Help You Identify Top Talent 

If you want to identify top talent, you have to ask the right questions during the interview.

Not only do you need to evaluate the candidate’s skill sets, but you also need to get a sense on how this potential employee thinks. By asking both closed and open-ended questions, you can gain valuable insight about your potential candidate.

Check out some top tips from our recruiters at Southwest Search to help you ask the right interview questions and find top talent.

1. Factual Closed-Ended Questions

These questions do not carry much depth. Use these questions to help break the ice in the interview to get your candidate comfortable while gaining basic information about their background.

Questions to include:

  • What’s the longest you’ve worked for any employer?
  • Have you ever worked in a different industry?
  • Are you comfortable working remotely?

2. Open-Ended Questions

The second type of questions to ask your candidate are open-ended questions. These will reveal attributes about the potential employee including attitude and opinion.

Questions to include:

  • Why do you want to work for this company?
  • What’s the biggest challenge you’ve ever faced in any job?
  • What could your current company do to be more successful?

3. Imaginary Questions

These type of questions forces your candidate to show how they would react to a given situation, which can help reveal certain traits that will allow you to see their critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Questions to include:

  • Let’s say you were given a generous budget for employee training. What would you spend it on?
  • If you were the hiring manager for this position, what skills would you be looking for in a candidate?
  • Out-Of-The-Box Questions

4. Out-Of-The-Box Questions

At times, these questions could seem weird, but they actually reveal certain qualities that are important in the long run when hiring.

Questions to include:

  • What’s the most important thing people don’t understand about you?
  • What’s the most difficult problem you’ve ever solved?
  • If you could be given any superpower, what would you choose?

At Southwest Search, we help companies find the right talent. Let our staffing experts help you today!

Contact us today!