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More Than a Feeling Planning, Interviewing, and Evaluating Suggested Interview Questions

Getting The Good Stuff -
Suggested Interview Questions To Elicit The Information You Need

The following are merely suggested questions to elicit certain information. As will be discussed, below, it's also important to tailor questions that reflect the personality of your specific company.

What is your supervisor's function? This question gets to the heart of what the candidate's current job actually entails.
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Describe your typical workday. This question gives you an idea of how the candidate's duties relate to the job for which you're hiring.

Tell me about the people you hired in your last job. (How many did you hire? How long did they stay? How did they work out?) This series of questions gives you idea of the candidate's ability to assemble and keep a strong staff.

Describe what it takes for a person to be a successful as a [fill in position title here]. This question is an indirect way of having a candidate reveal his own strengths and weaknesses.

What strengths did you bring to your last job that made you effective? This question is another indirect way of revealing strengths or weaknesses.

How do you go about making important decisions? This question gives a sense of how the candidate is likely to operate on the job.

What are some things your company might have done to be more successful? This question lets you know if the candidate gets the "big picture". If he can't answer, this may show a lack of depth. This particular question can also elicit negative feelings the candidate may have for his current employer, which could be indicative of personality problems.

Why are you interested in this job? This question separates the candidate who just wants any job from the candidate whose career ambitions are consistent with the job opportunity.

Why have you decided to leave your present job? This question can reveal what motivates a candidate: career growth, money, personal challenge, etc,

What are your most significant professional accomplishments? This question substantiates strength.

What have been your biggest professional failures? This question can reflect self-knowledge, and how comfortable a candidate is in revealing weaknesses.

What risks did you take in your last job, and what was the result? This question separates the average applicants from the superstars. Studies show that highly successful people take calculated risks. This question also gives insight into a candidate's judgment.

When you have trouble solving a problem, what are you likely to do? This question indicates how dependent or independent the candidate is likely to be.
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Describe the best boss you ever had. This question indicates what kind of supervision the candidate likes.

What differentiates you from other applicants? This question indicates how well the candidate understands the position.

Finally, as discussed earlier, it's important to stay natural during an interview. Review these questions before you meet with a candidate so you're not reading directly from a sheet like the unfortunate animator interviewer. Also, ask your own questions. This is in no way intended as a complete list. In fact, questions that indicate a little personalized thought can make a big impact on a candidate. One of my favorite interviewing stories illustrates this piece of interviewing advice particularly well: An exceptional animator recently interviewed with a new game company. Before the interview, he was unsure as to whether he wanted to make the switch. After the interview he called his recruiter and told her that he had been particularly impressed with the questions that had been asked. Rather than asking those same, tired, overly general questions like "where do you see yourself in ten years," his interviewers had asked him the following questions:

• What kinds of animation do you like?
  
  
• What kinds of games do you see yourself playing in five years?
  
  
• What kinds of animation do you like to do?

This series of questions gave the animator the chance to really talk about the games he liked to make versus the games he liked to play and where he thought games would be in the next decade. Not only was the animator impressed with the company's thoughtful questioning, the company succeeded in eliciting even more information from the candidate. With carefully considered interviewing, both the candidate and the company can come away with more than a feeling.

Marc Mencher is a software engineer by training and worked for game companies like Spectrum Holobyte and 3DO, before founding Virtual Search, a game industry-recruiting firm. Marc's articles have been featured in Gamasutra, GameWEEK, GIG, and other industry publications. You can contact Marc directly at marc@vsearch.com or 800.779.3334. Visit the Virtual Search website for more game industry jobs information at www.vsearch.com

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