Skip to main content

7 Must-Ask Questions When Interviewing A Potential New Hire


Awhile back, the Harvard Business Review published some great questions that Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan asks when he is checking references.

Ryan serves on the board of Yale Corporation, Human Rights Watch, and INSEAD, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He holds a B.A. from Yale University and a M.B.A from INSEAD.

His main seven honest-feedback-extracting-questions (and follow-ups) are:
  1. Would you hire this person again?  If so, why and in what capacity?  If not, why not?
  2. How would you describe the candidate's ability to innovate, manage, lead, deal with ambiguity, get things done and influence others?
  3. What were some of the best things this person accomplished?  What could he or she have done better?
  4. In what type of culture, environment, and role can you see this person excelling?  In what type of role is he or she unlikely to be successful?
  5. Would you describe the candidate as a leader, a strategist, an executor, a collaborator, a thinker, or something else?  Can you give me some examples to support your description?
  6. Do people enjoy working with the candidate, and would former coworkers want to work with him or her again?
  7. In what areas does the candidate need to improve?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Playbook For How Women Advance Within Business

Describing the new book, In Her Own Voice , by Jennifer McCollum , Anne Chow (former CEO of AT&T Business) says that “for women, the book does a beautiful job of explaining not just what to do to advance in your career, but also what to expect. For leaders, it helps you recognize the gap between what you think women seeking advancement want and what they really need.”  Chow adds, “the book is based on the experiences of tens of thousands of women, with guidance that is applicable to every one of us, no matter where we are on our own unique journey.”  McCollum divides her book into three parts:  Understanding the hurdles to women’s advancement Overcoming the hurdles Eliminating the hurdles  She professes that women have unique gifts and abilities. “Businesses need talented women, now more than ever. We need to do everything possible to engage, develop, and inspire them—and to advance them into leadership roles, all the way to the C-suite and board positions, if they so c

How To Lead With Gratitude

Now is a perfect time to read the leadership book,  Leading With Gratitude , by authors  Adrian Gostick  and  Chester Elton .  The book provides managers and executives with easy ways to add more gratitude to the everyday work environment to help bolster moral, efficiency, and profitability.  Gostick and Elton also share  eight simple ways managers can show employees they are valued . Then, they supplement their insights and advice with stories of how many of today’s most successful leaders successfully incorporated gratitude into their leadership styles.  Earlier this year, the authors answered this question for me:  Question : During this most unusual and challenging recent pandemic time why is it more important than ever to express gratitude? And how best should a leader do that?  Gostick and Elton : “Our research shows there is a staggering gratitude deficit in the work world, especially when times get tough. People are less likely to express gratitude at work than anyplace else. A

How To Move From Being Tactical To Being Truly Strategic

Today’s business leaders are faced with many challenges: intense competition, increased regulation, and the need for constant innovation. Therefore, it’s imperative that as a business leader you have the essential meta-skill to navigate your business with a thorough understanding of your current situation, vision to see the future destination, and the ability to create the path to reach it,” explains Rich Horwath , author of the new book, Strategic .  He says that being strategic is to possess insight that leads to advantage. Strategic is the opposite of unstrategic that includes:  Wondering aimlessly , lacking direction, getting lost in the weeds.  Doing everything , lacking the discipline to say no, and trying to be all things to all customers, both internally and externally.  Conducting meetings that take conversations down rabbit holes that cause widespread frustration amongst the members of your group.  Fortunately, the book provides you with the blueprint for navigati

How To Transform Your Perspective And Lead With Positivity

Here is a new book I imagine nearly everyone will benefit from. It is, The Negativity Fast . It's both a self-help book and a book for leaders who want to lead with positivity. At the core of the book is a thirteen-week negativity fast, during which you’ll progressively eliminate sources of negativity in your life for 90 days. And then from that point, you’ll have a new outlook on life and will have learned how to use gratitude to completely transform your mental outlook as you reframe the negative events in your life into events that made you stronger, more resilient, and better prepared for future setbacks.   “My goal is to help you reduce the time you spend in a negative state and increase the time you are positive,” explains the book’s author, Anthony Iannarino .   Particularly for business leaders, the book   offers easy-to-follow lessons on l earning to lead with positivity for effective change throughout your team and organization. The evidence-based exercises will giv

Today's Life Quotes

  Today's life quotes to guide you as we near the start of a new year: “ Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go. They merely determine where you start ." - Ido Qubein  “ Approach the New Year with resolve to find the opportunities hidden in each new day ." - Michael Josephson  “ Every year you make a resolution to change yourself. This year, make a resolution to be yourself " - Unknown  “ The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilo t.” - Michael Altshuler

Inspiring Leadership Quotes

These quotes truly inspire me and hopefully they will inspire you as well : “The three common characteristics of best companies -- they care, they have fun, they have high performance expectations.” -- Brad Hams “The one thing that's common to all successful people: They make a habit of doing things that unsuccessful people don't like to do.” -- Michael Phelps “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." -- Harry S. Truman “The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.” -- Peter Drucker “Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” -- Dwight D. Eisenhower “Good leadership isn't about advancing yourself.  It's about advancing your team.” -- John C. Maxwell "People buy into the leader, then the vision.” -- John C. Maxwell “Great leaders have courage, tenacity and patience.” -- Bill McBean "Pe

Effective Listening: Do's And Don'ts

Here are some great tips from Michelle Tillis Lederman's book, The 11 Laws of Likability .  They are all about: what to do and what not to do to be a leader who's an effective listener : Do : Maintain eye contact Limit your talking Focus on the speaker Ask questions Manage your emotions Listen with your eyes and ears Listen for ideas and opportunities Remain open to the conversation Confirm understanding, paraphrase Give nonverbal messages that you are listening (nod, smile) Ignore distractions Don't : Interrupt Show signs of impatience Judge or argue mentally Multitask during a conversation Project your ideas Think about what to say next Have expectations or preconceived ideas Become defensive or assume you are being attacked Use condescending, aggressive, or closed body language Listen with biases or closed to new ideas Jump to conclusions or finish someone's sentences

6 Ways To Seek Feedback To Improve Your Performance In The Workplace

Getting feedback is an important way to improve performance at work. But sometimes, it can be hard to seek out, and even harder to hear.  “Feedback is all around you. Your job is to find it, both through asking directly and observing it,” says David L. Van Rooy, author of the new book,  Trajectory: 7 Career Strategies to Take You From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be . As today's guest post, Van Rooy offers these  six tips for how to get the feedback you need to improve performance at work . Guest Post By David L. Van Rooy 1.       Don’t forget to as k :  One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming things are going perfectly (until they make a catastrophic mistake). By not asking, you’re missing out on opportunities for deep feedback: the difficult, critical feedback that gives you constructive ways to improve. 2.       Make sure you listen :  Remember, getting feedback is about improving your performance, not turning it into a “you versus the

10 Quotes From The 5 Levels Of Leadership -- John C. Maxwell

Soon I'll post my full review of John C. Maxwell's latest book, The 5 Levels of Leadership .  In the meantime, here are some of my favorites quotes from the book that I believe should become a must-read book by any workplace/organizational leader: Good leadership isn't about advancing yourself.  It's about advancing your team. Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others. Leadership is action, not position. When people feel liked, cared for, included, valued, and trusted, they begin to work together with their leader and each other. If you have integrity with people, you develop trust.  The more trust you develop, the stronger the relationship becomes.  In times of difficulty, relationships are a shelter.  In times of opportunity, they are a launching pad. Good leaders must embrace both care and candor. People buy into the leader, then the vision. Bringing out the best in a person is often a catalyst for

How to Be a Leader – 9 Principles from Dale Carnegie

Today, I welcome thought-leader Nathan Magnuson as guest blogger... Nathan writes : This is it, your first day in a formal leadership role.   You’ve worked hard as an individual contributor at one or possibly several organizations.   Now management has finally seen fit to promote you into a position as one of their own: a supervisor.   You don’t care if your new team is only one person or ten, you’re just excited that now – finally – you will be in charge! Unfortunately the euphoria is short-lived.   Almost immediately, you are not only overwhelmed with the responsibilities of a team, but you quickly find that your team members are not as experienced or adroit as you.   Some aren’t even as committed.   You find yourself having to repeat yourself, send their work back for corrections, and staying late to fill the gap.   If something doesn’t change soon, you might just run yourself into the ground.   How did something that looked so easy all of a sudden become so hard? Now w