What are the most common job interview questions?

Some of the most common interview questions are the most straight-forward and are simply about getting to know your candidate as a person and not a statistic or CV. Popular job interview questions include:

•  Tell me about yourself

•  Why do you want to work here?

•  Why are you looking to leave your current role?

•  Can you share a bit about your experience?

For more role-specific work interview questions, you should aim to better understand how the candidate performs in their role:

•  How familiar are you with <x>? For example, Live Chat for customer support agents

•  Have you worked in Agile?

•  How do you ensure you’re always working in a legally compliant way?

And, of course, always make sure to ask those essential admin questions, too:

•  What are your salary expectations?

•  What’s your notice period?

•  Are you applying for other jobs?

The best questions to ask in a job interview are the ones that help you find the best person for the job, so keep the following in mind as you craft your questions:

Make a list of ‘buzzwords’ you want to hear

For example, a UX designer should use words like ‘iterate’, ‘wireframes’, ‘journey’, and ‘research’ when describing their work and process. Work closely with the hiring team to make a detailed job specification so you know precisely what to listen out for. Didn’t hear what you were expecting? Simply ask, for example, ‘You haven’t mentioned using research in your designs, can you please share a time when you did?’.

Make sure you know what the hiring team want

You may know that the engineering team are looking for a new hire, but you’ll also need to tailor your questions to match the level of seniority or specialisms expected. For example, are your questions asking a candidate about the relevant coding languages they’ll be using? Are you asking them questions about how they manage direct reports? Again, the best questions to ask in a job interview are the ones that are perfectly aligned to the role.

Know where everyone is in the process

A repetitive interview can easily give candidates a poor impression of your company—if you can’t communicate well at the recruitment stage, they may not have faith in work processes being much better. Avoid common hiring mistakes and make sure everyone is kept in the loop, so your job interview questions and process follow a natural progression, for example:

-  Screening call (general questions about years in industry, salary etc)

-  First interview with hiring manager to check competency

-  Second behavioural interview with wider team

-  Possible final interview with senior team member to see if they’re a culture fit

At each stage, your work interview questions should deliver valuable insight into your candidate and help shape your final hiring decision. Questions that belong in interview three shouldn’t be appearing in the screening call, for example, and everyone in each round should be updated on how each previous interview went and the questions asked.

Be different, if you think it suits your culture

Everyone has heard of those creative interview questions that make a real impression and let your candidate’s personality come out. It’s important to find the balance, though, and make sure these questions come across as engaging and not as a trick. Popular job interview questions that are a little quirkier include:

-  If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?

-  What TV or movie character do you think you’re most like?

-  What’s your karaoke song?

There’s no one way to interview, and the way you choose to do it should reflect your company values. That may mean you prefer a more casual approach, or it might mean a more structured method so that any interview questions and answers can be assessed against certain criteria. Some interview methods include:

Panel interviews

This is where multiple colleagues interview the candidate, often from different teams. It’s a great way to see how a candidate interacts with a cross-section of the business, offering useful insight into their attitudes towards collaboration. It’s also an easy way to ensure any job interview questions asked feature some good variety. Remember to always introduce everyone in the call and tell the candidate ahead of time how many people to expect.

Skills assessment interviews

Usually reserved for technical or creative roles, these assessments are often given as take-home tasks that the candidate completes in a set time and then presents back to one or more interviewers. This is a great way to see how candidates can answer a brief, and how well they can pitch the resulting work. Interview questions and answers will also rise more organically throughout the presentation so it can be more engaging for everyone involved.

STAR method interviews

This focuses on specific events and outcomes over a candidate’s career, guiding them to give more precise insight into their work approaches. All STAR interview questions are set up with a variation of ‘Tell me about a time…’.

Find your next hire

LinkedIn Recruiter makes it easy to find top candidates while also streamlining the interview process. Track and organise candidates and share info with the team so no one is left out and the interview process becomes effortless.