100+ Interview Questions for Recruiters to Use

Recruiting can be tough. You’ve got multiple hiring managers wanting to fill several roles with very specific requirements. Not only that, each hiring manager wants their role filled as soon as possible. You can’t just optimize your recruiting process for speed— after all, you don’t want to have to backfill these same roles in 6 months. You also can’t craft perfectly tailored interview questions for each soft skill you’re evaluating, even though you know how important it is to have a structured interviewing process.

Or can you? 

Using structured interviewing

We’ve written before on the importance of structured interviewing. It’s a method that helps your hiring team make smarter, data-driven decisions in which you evaluate candidates based on their ability to succeed in a role, not their similarities to people who have already succeeded in the role. As a result, you’ll see that candidates from more diverse backgrounds are getting further in the interview process. Ultimately, this leads to a more diverse workforce.

Structured interviewing is one of the only proven ways to build a more diverse team, something almost all recruiters aim to do. Unfortunately, even with the best intentions, it’s easy to cut corners and skip structured interviewing. This is especially true when you’re trying to fill multiple roles at once.

So with this special post, we’ve gone one step further. We aren’t just telling you why structured interviewing matters. We’re giving you the exact questions you can use to actually create a structured interview process today!

100+ structured interview questions for recruiters

In our interview question spreadsheet, we provide over 100 questions that have been thoughtfully crafted to equitably evaluate candidates on a range of soft skills. Rather than relying on imprecise and possibly discriminatory metrics like pedigree or appearances, you can use these questions to determine which candidate actually meets your hiring team’s criteria.

In the spreadsheet, you’ll find questions to help you evaluate candidates on everything from adaptability to strategic thinking, change management to communication skills. Here are a few examples:

Adaptability

  • Describe for me a time you had to learn how to use a new tool at work.
  • If your colleagues had a “this is how we do it” attitude against learning something new, how would you attempt to convince them to follow a different, more effective method of working?

Attention to detail

  • Would you describe yourself as a perfectionist? Why or why not?
  • Describe for me what methods you use to check for quality? What about when you have to meet tight deadlines?

Strategic thinking

  • How do you measure the effectiveness of a strategy?
  • What are the key factors you take into consideration when creating an action plan?

Leadership

  • Tell me some specific ways that you motivate your team.
  • How do you monitor individual team members’ performance?

We hope you’ll:

  • Bookmark the spreadsheet and use these questions regularly
  • Share this article with your friends in recruiting
  • Let us know what you think!