The 5 Must-Ask Interview Questions to Determine if Someone's a Fit

You need to make sure everyone you bring on fits the culture of your business. Whether you are leading teams at a Fortune 500 company or just starting up, the need to make great cultural hires never goes away.

To hire for culture, your interview should not only consist of basic questions centered around values and team work but also more in-depth questions to understand if this person will be a good fit. How do you hire for culture? What types of questions should you ask potential candidates?

Basic questions like; What are your values? Tell me about a time you were part of a great team and what made it great? These questions only give you a surface level insights into whether a potential new hire will be a great cultural fit.

Following are five must-ask questions to determine if the people you are bringing on will be the right fit for your company.

1. Why do you want to work at this company and what are your expectations?

You need to know if people want to join your company for the right reasons. For example, do they know what it takes to be successful at an early-stage company? Are they prepared to embrace ambiguity? Are they ready to get their hands dirty? Are they ready to execute quickly with limited resources? Are they scrappy? Whatever values you hold true at the heart of your culture, you need to hire people who are aligned with how your business operates and the values you live by.

2. Who inspires you and why?

You must learn from people who their points of inspiration are. Who are their role models and what makes those people special to the candidate? You often garner quite a few insights from this question as it gives you a peak into the behavioral patterns an individual respects and in many cases models themselves after.

3 What’s your superpower?

Everybody is great at something. Everyone has a superpower. It is the go to trait you pull from when times get tough and you need put your head down, crank and produce. People should be honest about this and you should encourage an honest answer. Part of setting people up for success is ensuring you have them in the right role at the right time.

It is responsibility of a manager to get the very best out of their people. Putting them in right position with the right team is an important part of the equation. Doing so goes a long way towards ensuring positive cultural fits.

4. What motivates you to come into work every day?

There are a number of ways for people to answer this question, but try to find those that carry a great energy and hit on curiosity as a reason to run up the stairs every day. Great hires know that learning never ends and they maintain a high degree of intellectual curiosity throughout their day-to-day work. You will find that these hires stay on top of what is happening around them, the business and the industry. They identify trends before they happen and they think in a very pragmatic way. It’s a superpower not everyone possesses. When you find someone who is thinking about the world in a way that is bigger than him or her, that energy is contagious.

5. How do you rely on others to make you better?

This question gives people an opportunity to showcase their self-awareness. The best hires know that they don’t know everything. They are aware of their strengths and limitations and can speak to them both with transparency and honesty. In particular they can focus on specific areas they want to improve, grow and learn. They spend more time talking about their losses (and what they learned) than their wins. This shows that they cherish collaboration and the development of a transparent working environment.