While these questions may be unique, they’re designed to identify the right talent for your organization.
Why Use Unique Interview Questions?
Unique interview questions play a good role in an interview. They help to switch things up, and allow job applicants to demonstrate more of their skills and abilities.
In a sense, a lot of people at a job interview are looking for challenges, because they give them opportunities to stand out from the pack and make themselves look like the best option for an employer.
At the same time, curveball questions can tell interviewers more about the job applicant. You can go through a whole boilerplate interview without really understanding how one applicant is different from another, but by putting a little pressure on and adding spice to an interview, you can often see who shines and who folds under pressure. It’s all part of making an interview more “three-dimensional” and valuable – and after all, that’s why companies are moving to multi-stage interviews, which take longer and tie up more HR hours: so that they know more about applicants at the end of the process.
Examples of Unique Interview Questions
Let’s start with some common examples of curveball questions that, actually, a lot of companies do ask. How about questions like ‘what are your strengths and weaknesses?’ and ‘how have you dealt with a challenge at work?’ These questions are meant to encourage the applicants to be more introspective, and tell more about themselves.
Going beyond this, you could try more interesting interview questions like the following:
- Who do you look up to and why?
- Who would be your three ideal companions at a business dinner?
- What do you hate about your field?
- What do you see emerging in your industry in the next 10 years?
- What are you committed to?
- What’s your most significant accomplishment?
- What are some things I don’t know about you?
- What we’re you hired to do at your last job?
- What do you want to do after you leave this job?
- Who’s your favorite musician?
It’s interesting to note that some of these questions have to do with insight or philosophy in a particular field. Interviewers perform these kinds of questions partly to get the applicant talking about the industry. That way they can see how much he or she really knows. And that’s going to be very valuable when it’s time to sift through applications post-interview and find the right person to assume a given job role.
At Employment Solutions we help our clients to answer questions related to hiring, staffing, and much more.
You may also be interested in this blog post:
Reducing Employee Turnover- Hiring with Purpose
Have a question? We’re happy to help.
