Questions for a Job Interview: How Founders Can Turn Polished Resumes Into Verifiable Follow-Ups
When I talk to founders about interviews, they usually ask me how to write questions. But the answer is that the right question depends on what you’re trying to find out. Before you start asking questions, you should figure out what the role needs to solve and map those solutions against what the candidate claims in his or her resume. Then, if there are concerns about over-packaged ownership, metrics, budget, reporting lines, or transfer risk, you can ask about those.
You can think of this as a pre-interview setup. If you do it right, you’ll know before you even begin talking to the candidate whether you need to spend time with them.
Once you have your list of questions, you should open the interview by establishing rapport, transparency, and expectations. Strong interviews don’t begin with hard questions; they begin with process. When candidates understand what’s going to happen during the interview and why, they are less likely to be flustered. SHRM recommends starting an interview with a brief explanation of the process, setting expectations, and making sure the candidate feels comfortable. It also suggests using phrases like “Tell me about yourself,” rather than “Why do you want to work here?” to put the candidate at ease.
But if your goal is to get more signal, not a friendlier vibe, then you need to focus on the actual job. You can turn the polished language of the resume into targeted follow-ups by asking for examples, scope, decisions made, and results achieved. RoleProbe notes that one of the most effective ways to turn a bullet point from a resume into a follow-up is simply to say, “Could you tell me more about…?”
For example, instead of asking, “What does a typical day look like for you?” which is vague and gives the candidate an opportunity to coach their way through the interview, you could ask, “How did you handle X last week?” That gets the candidate to talk about specific events and actions, rather than generalities.
SHRM recommends using questions such as, “Can you give me an example of…?” and “Tell me about a time when…” to encourage candidates to explain their experience in detail. Rather than saying, “What are your strengths?” you might ask, “Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership.”
But while these techniques will help you extract information from a candidate, they won’t tell you whether the candidate is credible. For that, you must listen carefully. As SHRM puts it: “Candidates may provide verbal cues that reveal something about their credibility. In addition, nonverbal behaviors—such as eye contact, body language, and tone of voice—can indicate whether a candidate is being truthful.” And yet, as SHRM points out, people often miss warning signs because they are so focused on the candidate’s answers that they don’t notice inconsistencies.
If you want to test a candidate’s ability to own up to their actions, you should use behavioral prompts. These kinds of questions force the candidate to walk you through past experiences, and the best ones push the candidate to describe what he or she did and what changed as a result. Rutgers-Camden’s STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and PAR (Problem, Action, Result) can help you create such prompts. The idea is to get candidates to walk you through their story, but not just to reiterate what they’ve written in their resume. Instead, they should demonstrate how they personally solved a problem, and what happened after they did.
This is especially important when someone has made big claims in his or her resume, because it can be hard to tell whether the success was due to the candidate or the team. Behavioral questions force the candidate to take ownership of the outcome.
It’s also important to avoid leading questions. Washington State University summarizes research showing that 12 open-ended questions were used in interviews, along with follow-ups only when clarification was needed. The researchers noted that the interviewers avoided leading questions, meaning they didn’t phrase the questions in a way that suggested the answer they wanted.
After an interview, it’s important to document the conversation and mark what is still unproven. RoleProbe recommends taking detailed notes, reviewing them immediately after the call, and sharing the notes with other interviewers. They suggest that the notes should include a summary of the interview, a review of the candidate’s background, and a list of any unanswered questions.
The National Science Foundation uses a similar approach. Interviewers use written notes, introductory scripts, customized protocols, and follow-up communication to close unanswered questions. One NSF program manager said: “I always make a note of what I am looking for in the candidate, and I try to elicit that information in my questions. After the interview, I write down my impressions and thoughts, noting where I think I got good evidence and where I’m still missing information. I share that with the rest of the committee.”
Sometimes, though, an interview isn’t enough. If you have concerns about a candidate, you should consider another interview. But if you already asked the same set of questions, you don’t want to repeat the interview. Instead, you want to go deeper into areas that raised red flags. SHRM advises identifying topics that need more exploration and involving subject matter experts if necessary. It also recommends documenting insights from the interview, including both positive and negative aspects.
In fact, consistency across interviews is key when several candidates all seem great on paper. As RoleProbe notes, having a standardized set of follow-ups makes it easier to compare candidates quickly, since hiring a wrong person can cost a lot. It also reduces the chance that gut feelings influence the hiring decision.
Finally, you might end your interview with a question designed to uncover anything the candidate thinks you haven’t asked about. At Rutgers-Camden, interviewers end with the question, “What haven’t I asked you that you think I should know?”