Interview is a vital part of recruitment procedure. Some interviews are followed by the written test and others are taken directly. Job interview always brings stress, anxiety and fear for the interviewer especially if he/she is going to appear for the first time.
On the other hand, preparation is also needed by the interviewer for what questions to ask in order to make appropriate selection. There is general set of questions that are usually asked in most of the interviews. These questions can be categorized into seven types which include open questions, closed questions, hypothetical questions, leading questions, multi barreled questions, and behavioral questions.
The open questions are asked usually in the beginning of interview such as ‘tell us about yourself’? The interviewee can speak as much as he/she wants to describe himself/herself professionally. For answering such questions selection criteria and individual’s strength should be kept in mind.
Closed questions are those questions that do not provide enough chance for interviewee to speak apart from yes or no. These questions are asked in order to seek specific technical or factual information. The interviewee should make sure that he has understood the question completely otherwise he/she should not hesitate to request for clarification about the question.
In the hypothetical questions, a situation is created to assess the thinking abilities of the interviewee. For instance for a communication professional a questions could be like ‘what would you do if journalists calls suddenly for a query about your press release’? Such questions demand a solid knowledge about the subject matter.
The leading questions require logical answer. The interviewer may ask ‘this job requires working under pressure and meeting deadlines-do you have these skill? The answer should be more than a yes or no. It should be supported with the previous experience.
Multi barreled questions are two or more combined questions relevant to the same topics. Such questions can be confusing for the interviewee. In this case he/she may ask to recall the questions.
The last category of the questions, behavioral questions are asked to foresee the future behavior of the candidate in the light of past experience. It needs to answer with examples of past experience that how the particular skills were developed in the past and how it can benefit the interviewer.
There are some questions which should be avoided to ask for example personal question about the age, martial status, family background or height? Although such questions are necessary for the particular jobs for instance in army or air lines but the best alternatives can be asked instead of asking such questions directly, if an interviewer observes a candidate out of the job criteria for the reasons of his personal information.