Interview questions

Interview questions should be drawn up before the interview and shared with panel members. Ensure all panel members are clear on the questions, who will ask them, and in what order.

Ask all candidates the same set of core questions. However, you should follow candidate's responses with more probing secondary questions.

Whatever you ask should be designed to test the candidates skills and abilities against the person specification. Here are some different types of questions to consider:

• open questions should be used extensively as they invite the candidate to talk freely and descriptively
• probing questions are a good way to encourage the candidate to expand or clarify an answer
• experience based questions can be used to gauge skills and competence gained in relevant circumstances
• leading questions should be avoided as the responses are unlikely to reflect the true abilities or experience of a candidate
• hypothetical questions should be used sparingly as they can be confusing and invite model answers which may not reflect the candidates' realistic experiences.
• multi-part questions may confuse the candidate; they also give them an opportunity to skip over the parts which they would rather not answer
• experience based questions can be used to gauge skills and competence gained in relevant circumstances

Sensitve questions

All the questions you ask are relevant to the person specification and the candidate's ability to succeed in the role. Questions regarding any reasonable adjustments the candidate would require should be asked once an offer has been made rather than as part of the selection process. However, there may be aspects of certain applications that require clarification, such as significant gaps in employment history or incomplete parts of a form. Such a question must be asked sensitively and in a non-judgemental manner, the focus of your question should explore the reasons behind the gap and how it may relate to the job requirements. If you have any concerns about how to pose sensitive questions, speak to your HR contact before the day of interviews.

A bank of generic questions is available as a starting point for your own set of questions.