Interview Questions to Make Your Company’s Hiring Process Better

The security industry, like any other, faces hiring challenges, and identifying, engaging, recruiting and hiring the best talent available is critical to fueling future strategic growth plans. A key component of the hiring process is asking the right questions in interviews.

Good interview questions should encompass several areas if they are to be useful in making solid hiring decisions. Here are some good interview question topics to consider:

• Their understanding of your company (Did they do their homework?)
• Their career goals, with specific timelines
• Their understanding of the position elicited by role-based questions
• Their exposition of their greatest talent or skill (Is it relevant to this position; is everybody on the same page?)
• Targeted scenario questions, such as “How do you prioritize your work?”
• Add a little “stress” to the interview by including some wild-card questions
• Creating a sentence for the interviewee to complete (e.g., If a customer said, “I am no longer going to do business with your company,” what would be your first comment and/or question to that customer?)

In our Employer’s Complete Guide to Hiring (produced exclusively for SIA by Matterhorn Consulting as a benefit to members), we outline these key interview question best practices:

• Build a library of interview questions categorized by roles and responsibilities.
• Engage your team to build your question library; ask each of them what top questions are the most important to ask for a specific role.
• Gather the department managers’ key interview questions and review them as a team to gain insights. Categories of questions should include those that measure cultural fit, job-specific knowledge, work ethic and attitude, problem-solving approaches and  emotional maturity.
• Tap your greatest source of knowledge (existing employees, channel partners, trusted advisors, professional associates and valued suppliers) by asking them their favorite questions.
• Promote communication training to get your interview team on the same page as you develop the interview process.

For more information on how to develop great interview questions and strengthen your overall hiring process, see SIA’s guide.