Experienced Interviewers - what makes a 'good' interview? What sort of questions do you ask to get candidates talking so you have a sense of who they are/how they'd perform?

[Earlybird]

A CV provides background/historical information - obviously.

How do you build on that information to get a sense of the candidate's personality, character, work ethic, etc?

In particular, I am looking to judge tenacity, resourcefulness, flexibility, self-starting qualities, and ability to work under pressure.

Thanks for advice.

Always ask for examples of the characteristic I wish for them to demonstrate. "So Mr Candidate, can you give me an example of a time when you had to work under pressure? How did you deal with this?"

And then press them on it. So when they tell you about the time they had to work all night to meet a tight deadline, ask did they meet it, did working through the night affect their performance, could they have done anything better, differently, if they had been better organised could they have avoided this situation entirely etc etc.

The more examples people can give the better. So if it's a particularly important trait, I may ask for more than one example.

If they struggle to think of one but you want to give them a chance, make one up and ask them what they would do in that circumstance.

it sounds like you need some sort of competency based interview. for this you need to identify the attributes that matter to you - which it looks like you have done although you also need to be able to explain why those things matter - which I'm sure you can also do.

then you need to ask the candidate questions to evaluate their possession of those attributes. this means open questions such as "tell me about a time when you had to adapt your plans because something changed unexpectedly" - clearly these can be made more specific depending on the position you are recruiting for. you may want to ask follow up questions specific to the examples provided by the candidate.

you can preplan questions of this type for each of the competencies you have identified.

I find it useful to have a stock of standard questions I ask all the candidates, so you can compare the answers. This is actually most useful for a team of 4 that I lead - over time I have built up a good feel for what the best answers are, and when there is no hope.

These are mainly competency questions, as MrsW has suggested.

Can I ask a question relating to being the interviewee? I have applied for a couple of posts recently, and I am awaiting an interview for promotion in the area I work (other jobs were relevant to my cv and interest but not successful), but my boss knows I have applied for them. I believe they plan to ask this question at interview:

how many jobs have you applied for recently?

I would love to have the promotion but my face doesn't fit with the manager so know she wouldn't give me the job no matter what. Can they ask this question? What would be a good response to it?

Apologies for hijacking the thread,
Tiggly.

try this site www.cbi-smart.com it's an online interview generator for employers, you can download one interview for free..

I think the problem is in your thread title. You are thinking about having a conversation, 'getting them talking' so that you can get a 'sense' of them. It really has to be a bit more clinical than that I'm afraid. Otherwise you run the risk of appointing the person with whom conversation flows nicely and you identify with a lot, rather than the best person for the job.

You already have the qualities/skills you want, and probably have more on the job description. You need a question for each 'thing' you want to discuss, asking them for examples of when they have demonstrated that behaviour in the past. You want them talking about their past behaviour, what happened, how they dealt with it, what the outcome was, what they learned from it. You don't want them talking about hypotheticals, so don't say 'what would you do if...'. Anyone can make up an ideal answer to hypothetical questions but it's much more difficult to do that if you are asked for actual evidence.

Other than when going through their cv and specific experience, make sure you ask all the candidates the same questions, so you can compare the answers directly.

Tiggly they can ask whatever they want as long as it's not discriminatory. That questions isn't remotely relevant to your ability to do the job in question, so I'd politely refuse to answer it if I were you.

that question, sorry.

Thank you flowerybeanbag, that is what I wanted to know, it doesn't reflect on my ability to do the job so why do they need to ask!
Thanks again,
Tiggly