What are the first and last questions you ask in any job interview?


What do you like to do?
What do you hate to do?

From an interview with John Catsimatidis on Forbes.com .

Recruiting the right people is a vital part of a leader's job. And yet recruitment is treated, says the Brazilian entrepreneur Ricardo Semler, in a superficial fashion in most organizations. The applicants fill in a form, come and answer questions once or maybe twice. Then you appoint them. Or not.

That's like getting married after meeting someone twice from an online dating site, says Semler. He's right, of course. No wonder if you ask executives what their biggest regrets are, somewhere in the list will be a number of people they appointed who turned out to be not what the exec. hoped they'd be.

The knock-on effect to your plans of mis-appointing is huge and longterm. We all know people we've had to work around because they wouldn't or couldn't leave. The waste in terms of cost is enormous. The waste in terms of opportunity cost - if you had the right person in post - is even bigger.

The two questions, above, sparked off a big debate over in The Leadership Hub, where one person thought they were a joke, but a number of people say that these are vital questions, and have added a few questions of their own. The link, above, takes you to their comments.

What do you think of these questions?
What questions do you ask that help reveal the 'real' person beneath the outer shell that is an interviewee?

Labels: job interview questions, leadership and questions, recruiting, Ricardo Semler