When delivering exceptional customer experience is paramount to your Premium and Luxury brand, traditional job interview questions are very limiting.

  • Tell me about yourself.
  • What are your strengths and weaknesses?
  • Why are you the best person for the job?
  • Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
  • Tell me about a time when . . .
  • What motivates you? Frustrates you?

You can learn more truth about a job candidate on Google than by asking traditional interview questions. #ThatMakesProfitableSense

The problem. Traditional interview questions evoke rehearsed responses and produce no valuable insight. If the new hire doesn’t fit your company culture, it won’t matter how well the job is done – they won’t stay and you will not want them to.

However, I do not advocate for hiring incompetent people – just because you like them. I have conducted Profit Finding Auditsâ„¢ for companies that focused solely on “hiring people who fit in” – to the detriment of important qualifications, and the result was disastrous.

The Solution. To stop hiring people who turn out to be duds, use their resume and references to evaluate qualifications – use the interview to reveal character.

“You can train task – you cannot train character”. #ThatMakesProfitableSense

For two decades, I have successfully used “the ONE question interview” to find the right employees – for myself and my clients. The strategy works because the question is designed to quickly remove the mask and nearly impossible to prepare for.

What is your favorite interview question to ask job candidates?


Originally published by Linette Montae on LinkedIn March 19, 2016