Hiring Wisdom: Twenty Ways to Get Job Applicants to Tell You More

Want to know more, but don’t know how to ask? Non-specific, open-ended questions encourage prospective employees to speak freely and give you the information you need to make a good decision.

Try some of these conversation facilitators:

“And?”
“Any regrets?”
“How did that work?”
“Are you sure?”
“Compared to what?”
“What else?”
“Tell me more about that.”
“And you’ve never had a problem with _______?”
“Could you be more specific?”
“How did/do you feel about that?”
“What makes you think that?”
“What didn’t/did you like about that?”
“What did you do then?”
“If you could change one thing, what would it be?”
“What examples come to mind?”
“Why do you think you saw the results you did?”
“What happened next?”
“What concerned you most about that?”
“What did/do you hope to achieve?”
“If you could wave a magic wand right now, what would it do?”

Mel Kleiman will be talking about how Great HR is Simple — It’s Just Not Easy at this week’s TLNT Transform conference in Austin, TX. (Feb. 26-28, 2012). Click here for more information on this event.

This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.