Here is a test for any screening question you are about to send out. Could a candidate who has read nothing but the job advert answer it convincingly? If yes, the question is not doing any work.
The questions that fail the test
- Tell us about yourself. Useful as a warm-up. Useless as a filter.
- Why do you want to work here? You are measuring who researched you, not who can do the job.
- What are your strengths? Everyone has read the same advice about how to answer this.
None of these are wrong exactly. They just do not distinguish anyone, which means every minute spent watching the answers is a minute you do not get back.
Ask about a decision, not a quality
Instead of asking whether someone is good at prioritising, ask them to walk through a time they had to drop something. Instead of asking whether they know a technology, ask what they would check first when it misbehaves in production.
Decisions are hard to fake because they carry consequences, and the consequences are where experience shows.
Constrain the scope
A question with no boundaries produces a rambling answer, and a rambling answer is hard to compare against anyone else's. Give it edges:
- Name the situation: "a project that slipped", not "a difficult time".
- Name what you want out of it: the trade-off they made, the thing they would do differently.
- Set a length that matches. Two minutes for a warm-up, five for something they need to think through.
Put the hardest question second
First questions are where nerves live. Candidates settle after one answer, so the question that actually decides things should come once they have found their feet — but before the fatigue of a long set.
Write four, not ten
A ten-question screening round is not a screen, it is an interview with extra steps. Four good questions will tell you who to talk to, and they respect the fact that candidates are doing this in their own time, often after work.
One last thing: read your questions out loud before you send them. Anything you stumble over reading, a candidate will stumble over answering.
