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Best Practices to Mitigate Ghosting in Your Organization

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What started as an annoyance in the hiring process has now become a major problem for employers. Each year, the number of dropped connections increases 10-20%! So, how do you mitigate ghosting among your applicants and new hires?

Ghosting in the Workplace

After the 2008 Great Recession, employers were flooded with applications and only responded to the ones they were most interested in. Thus began the practice of ghosting in the workplace. Job applicants had no way of knowing if there was a problem with their application or if the role had already been filled. They only knew they weren’t getting any feedback.

Now, it’s a candidate’s market. Unemployment is at historic lows, and the shoe is on the other foot. Applicants routinely fall off the face of the earth – and even new hires don’t show up for work or drop out in the first few days.

Many of these ghosters are young and just don’t understand how rude it is to abandon the interview process without notifying the company. They don’t understand that this behavior will cause long-term consequences for their careers. Nevertheless, you’ve still got to deal with the reality of unfilled positions and the damage ghosting can cause your organization.

Fortunately, there are best practices and strategies you can employ to mitigate ghosting and reduce the havoc you face in hiring and retention. Here are some of the best tips to incorporate in your CRE organization to keep applicants and new hires engaged, responsive, and committed.

5 Tactics to Mitigate Ghosting

1. Don’t Ghost

It’s called the Golden Rule. If you don’t want applicants to disappear on you, don’t allow this behavior from your hiring managers. Follow up with everyone to build a culture of communication.

2. Exit Interviews

If a new hire fails to show up on Day 1 or leaves at some other point during their employment unexplained, reach out! While they may not respond, asking for an exit interview to let them air their grievances may provide valuable information for future risk mitigation.

3. Shorten Hiring Times

Long periods of time between the interview and job offer allow applicants to lose interest or respond to other opportunities. Working with a professional headhunter in the CRE industry will help you lesson this time period and snatch up top talent quickly while they’re still hot.

4. Get Onboarding Right

Approximately 20% of employee turnover occurs in the first six weeks due to poor onboarding. Don’t just sit your new hire at a desk with a stack of forms to fill out on Day 1. Perfect your hands-on onboarding process to ensure your new hire feels engaged, valued, and part of the mission from the start.

5. Do Your Homework

To mitigate ghosting in your hiring process, do your due diligence to find out if candidates have ever ghosted before. Search Glassdoor and LinkedIn for signs of ghosting in the past. If need be, weed out questionable candidates from your short list.

Remember, you cannot completely prevent ghosting. It’s becoming more and more common in the workplace and hiring process. However, following these critical steps can help minimize exposure and disruption. For a minimal investment, your organization can sidestep much of this problem and maximize engagement for those seeking to join your team

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4 Benefits of Using Employee Engagement Surveys

Employee engagement is instrumental in employee retention and effectiveness. But why engagement surveys? What role do they play in the ongoing search for high retention and productivity rates? Below are four key benefits they provide:

1. Starting Point for Growth

The following top employee engagement questions establish a benchmark. When you receive honest and detailed feedback about employee concerns, ambitions, and questions, this builds trust and fosters a growth environment by setting the starting point. Knowing what you are working with and should build on is great!

2. Employee Voice

Giving employees a voice to vent or contribute builds company morale. This opens a channel of communication for collaboration and employee buy-in.

3. Easier to Be Proactive

Problems that go unaddressed and unnoticed grow in complexity and strength. However, when you’re able to identify them early on, this allows more proactive management and fine tuning.

4. Objectivity

Management can easily lose touch or develop subjective perspectives. A regular inflow of honest feedback allows for an objective grasp of office situations in real time. It allows you to process loads of information from different perspectives and get a high-level understanding.

8 Top Employee Engagement Questions

Recently, Culture Amp pulled and analyzed employee data from Glassdoor ratings, Mattermark Growth scores, and other sources. Crunching this data, they put together a highly insightful report on what drives employee engagement and what the top employee engagement questions are for 2021. Below are 10 questions they argue should be in every employee engagement survey – whether in CRE or any other industry:

1. Are you proud to work for this company?

Would your employee be proud to mention your company if asked about work at a neighborhood barbecue? This does not focus directly on engagement, but rather on a desired outcome of engagement. Beware if fewer than 80% of employees answer in the affirmative.

2. Will you likely be working here in two years?

Employees not currently searching for a job elsewhere may not necessarily see themselves at this role in two years. Again, this focuses on an evidence of strong engagement. And 65% or more is strong retention indicator.

3. Do company leaders keep you informed?

It goes without saying that communication is a key strength among successful CRE businesses. A score of 70% is optimal and shows strong engagement with leadership.

4. Is your manager a good role model for company employees?

Asking about management’s effectiveness in the broader context helps set a benchmark for the direct-report relationship. A score less than 70% may indicate a need for additional management training.

5. Do you have what you need to perform your job well?

This question focuses on enablement and gets at the fundamental need for the right tools to drive engagement. You should expect a high percentage of affirmative answers to this one – at least 75%+.

6. Do you have the learning/development tools to perform your job well?

Similar to the last one, this question goes deeper to determine if employees feel they are supported in their ongoing development at this company. Can they grow here? 70% is a normal percentage.

7. Do you receive appropriate recognition for your work?

Acknowledgement and praise are fundamental drivers of employee engagement. This question reveals whether this need is being met. Aim for at least 75%.

8. Do you know how to be successful in your role?

Asking this opens up the employee’s perspective of how he or she directly contributes to the success of the company. Alignment of the individual to the team mission is crucial, so a return of 80% or more should be standard for every survey.

No matter how large or small our CRE organization, taking the time to ask these top employee engagement questions in every survey will open new conversations, thus leading to enhanced performance, retention, and innovation.

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Workplace Burnout: Are You Experiencing Symptoms?

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People who are struggling to cope with workplace stress may place themselves at high risk of burnout. Workplace burnout can leave people feeling exhausted, empty, and unable to cope with the demands of life.

Burnout may be accompanied by a variety of mental and physical health symptoms as well. If left unaddressed, burnout can make it difficult for an individual to function well in their daily life.

What Is Burnout?

The term “burnout” is a relatively new term, first coined in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger, in his book, Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement. He originally defined burnout as, “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.”

Burnout is a reaction to prolonged or chronic job stress and is characterized by three main dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism (less identification with the job), and feelings of reduced professional ability.

More simply put, if you feel exhausted, start to hate your job, and begin to feel less capable at work, you are showing signs of burnout.

The stress that contributes to burnout can come mainly from your job, but stress from your overall lifestyle can add to this stress. Personality traits and thought patterns, such as perfectionism and pessimism, can contribute as well.

Most people spend the majority of their waking hours working. And if you hate your job, dread going to work, and don’t gain any satisfaction out of what you’re doing, it can take a serious toll on your life.

Signs and Symptoms of Workplace Burnout

While workplace burnout isn’t a diagnosable psychological disorder, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Here are some of the most common signs of burnout:

Alienation from work-related activities: Individuals experiencing burnout view their jobs as increasingly stressful and frustrating. They may grow cynical about their working conditions and the people they work with. They may also emotionally distance themselves and begin to feel numb about their work.
Physical symptoms: Chronic stress may lead to physical symptoms, like headaches and stomachaches or intestinal issues.
Emotional exhaustion: Burnout causes people to feel drained, unable to cope, and tired. They often lack the energy to get their work done.
Reduced performance: Burnout mainly affects everyday tasks at work—or in the home when someone’s main job involves caring for family members. Individuals with burnout feel negative about tasks. They have difficulty concentrating and often lack creativity.

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7 Helpful Tips to Engage Employees Remotely

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As many CRE companies return to work, while balancing distancing measures and restrictions, it’s crucial for employers to understand how to continue to engage employees remotely. It’s hard motivating and managing from a distance, but it’s probably going to be a common reality going forward.

It pays for competitive CRE firms to get this right. Maintaining a cohesive and productive team – even through remote work – is vital adapting for the future.

Is Remote Work Here to Stay?

While many of us hoped to get back to our old office life as soon as possible, many others found they preferred work from home. And there are numerous reasons to believe working remotely will be far more common in coming years than it ever was before. Let’s look at the data:

Remote working has increased 140% since 2005.
Allowing remote work is better for employee retention, with a 25% improvement over companies who don’t allow this flexibility.
It’s also better for productivity, with a 24% boost over employees at non-remote companies.
16% of all companies hire only remote workers.
94% of professionals in CRE believe remote working will continue after the crisis is over.

It’s Not That Hard to Engage Employees Remotely

With remote work growing and becoming more normal, it’s absolutely crucial to know how to drive a positive team synergy from a distance. But how do you engage employees remotely? How do you get them excited about the mission and keep tabs on their progress when they’re not even in the office?

Fortunately, it’s not that hard. Here are some tips to help you inspire and engage your work-from-home and telecommuting employees just as well (if not better) as in an office!

7 Helpful Tips

1. Set clear expectations Don’t let employees feel alone and isolated. There is a danger they could wither on the vine without a clear understanding of their position in the team. Make sure there are written details and expectations laid out from what their working hours are to progress points and goals to achieve.

2. Communicate Clearly Professionals in the commercial real estate business already know how important it is to communicate – both with clients and internally. Effective business communication is all the more important when engaging employees remotely.

3. Schedule Regular Video Calls

There’s something about getting on a video call with your supervisor and/or fellow team members that brings you out of your shell and forces engaged creativity. Schedule them at least once a week, even if only for 15 minutes.

4. Use Chat Make sure you and your team share a chat app in common to allow for more casual back and forth. So much of the success of the in-office dynamic was water-cooler chit-chat. It just can’t be adequately replaced by formal video meetings and email exchanges. A chat app will allow for both quicker responses and more casual conversations.

5. Be Flexible Remember, the beauty of remote work is the flexibility. To really engage employees remotely, be sure you don’t try too hard to re-create the office structure virtually. Whenever possible, give employees autonomy over their schedule, etc. This helps to build trust, creative liberty, and engagement.

6. Be Sociable Virtual team building may be a challenge, but it should not be overlooked. Set up hangout times, activities, or even in-person events if possible, to stave off loneliness and disconnect.

7. Mix It Up

Gallop found that the optimal mix for employee engagement is 3-4 days remote and 1-2 in office. When possible, engage employees remotely by bringing them back to the office a day or two each week. They’ll appreciate the change, and you’ll find managing and engaging them to be much easier and automatic.

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Key Steps to Successfully Conducting a Behavioral Interview

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There’s nothing worse than a bad fit. There are many hidden costs associated with hiring the wrong person. Successfully conducting a behavioral interview is a great way to sift through the fluff and open up key areas of compatibility in a potential new hire. If your CRE company is interested in improving your interview game, read on for key steps to incorporate into your process.

What Is Behavioral Interviewing?

Traditional interview methods ask how a candidate may react in a given situation. After all, a hiring manager is after key information to ensure the candidate is qualified for the job. So, questions in this mode directly ask what the candidate’s responses might be.

However, conducting a behavioral interview is different. In this mode, the hiring manager asks how a candidate has already responded to a situation like this. What specific solutions did they innovate? How did they adapt in a previous incident on the job?

The premise is that a new hire will act according to their set patterns or previous record. If you can look into their past, you’ll more accurately predict their future.

The Process of Conducting a Behavioral Interview

Boiled down, there are basically three steps to nailing this interview approach:

1. The first priority with this approach to interviewing is identifying the skills and experiences required for success in your agency or organization. What key traits or skills do you find common among others who have been successful in this or a similar role? Valuable traits to look for may include:

Confidence
Adaptability
Focus
Integrity
Enthusiasm

2. Second, craft a list of interview questions that solve for these skills and traits. If communication is important, ask for a specific example of their clear communication. Some effective interview questions you might ask while conducting a behavioral interview are:

Describe a time when you had to work with a person whose personality or work style differed from yours.
How have you anticipated a problem in the past and successfully taken steps to prevent it?
Have you ever faced a looming deadline with multiple priorities? How did you balance them to meet the deadline?

3. Thirdly, evaluate candidate responses and ask detailed follow-up questions. Behaviorally-based interview questions have been around for decades, and job seekers may prepare polished answers in advance. Rather than simply asking what they did, follow up with detailed questions about why they did it, how they did it, and how their colleagues might have described the incident.

Additional Helpful Steps

In addition to the three process steps described above, here are more helpful steps you can benefit from in conducting a behavioral interview more effectively:

Write a job description that solicits candidates who excel in the traits and experiences at the top of your priorities.
Review the hiring documents (resume, cover letter, application) with your target traits in mind prior to the interview.
Narrow down the talent pool with a phone screening that discusses your most crucial target traits or qualifications.
Ask multiple questions about a high-priority trait for a multi-dimensional understanding of their qualification in that area.
Partner with a high-performing recruiting firm to ensure a pool of qualified talent and for help with often overlooked interview tips and practices.

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How to Inspire Higher Employee Retention

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In trying times like these, employee retention is a huge concern for employers. This is especially true in challenged markets like commercial real estate. As workplace culture changes and the economy becomes more unpredictable, building a loyal employee culture is simultaneously more vital and more difficult.

But it doesn’t have to be impossible. Understanding the factors that lead to higher employee retention in the CRE workplace will give you the competitive edge to build and maintain a dynamic workforce intensely loyal to your company and goals.

Employee Retention Starts at the Beginning

The first and greatest way to reduce employee turnover is to hire the right people, according to the Wall Street Journal. A poor or shallow hiring process will produce a high turnover rate. People don’t tend to hang around when they are not closely aligned with the company culture, values, projects, or skill set requirements.

There are numerous costs associated with a bad hire, and a high turnover rate is one of the least talked about. Yet your company stands to lose a ton of revenue, productiveness, and even morale. To protect your bottom line, keep your employee retention high by hiring the right people for the right job. Your employee retention program should begin all the way at the beginning with a highly effective and thorough hiring process.

The onboarding process is also crucial to ensuring low turnover. Starting on Day One, give your new hire the right first impression. 54% of new hires report a mishap on the first day of a new job! To start on the right foot:

Prepare their workstation in advance with the supplies and equipment they need (this may look different in a virtual environment, but remains important).
Have a clear list of expectations and responsibilities ready and waiting for them.
Immediately introduce them to the team in a sociable way, giving them a chance to start lasting relationships. This is especially relevant in a virtual work environment. The team needs to be able to understand who the new hire is and what capabilities they have to ensure the right training, management direction, and workload is provided.

Invest in Company Culture

While a competitive compensation package is important for employee retention, even more integral is workplace culture. Inspire your employees with a culture of inclusion and diversity. Clearly communicate to them the company mission and values and gather their buy-in as well. When your employees believe in your company, they won’t jump ship at the first opportunity to make an extra buck. Position your organization as more than just a workplace. Foster an atmosphere of family and cooperation.

Stephen Covey once called trust “the one thing that changes everything.” And building workforce relationships on trust can be the difference maker for employee retention. Here are a few secret ingredients for infusing trust into your company culture:

Establish Competence: If your employees believe they work for the best company in your field, this will build trust and loyalty.
Demonstrate Integrity: It goes without saying that honesty is the absolute best policy for building trust in the workplace.
Be Consistent: If your division or company is always swinging from one extreme to the other in response to market changes, employees won’t be able to trust in your stability and longevity.
Decide with Transparency: Your employees are your stakeholders; don’t leave them in the dark.

Become Your Employees’ Career Coach

It sounds counterintuitive, but taking an interest in furthering the career goals of your employees will result in higher employee retention. Employees must feel fulfilled and engaged in their work. Therefore, your job as a manager is to help them find their purpose and then align it with their contributions to the company. When they are thoroughly engaged and appreciated, they will be far less likely to roam.

Ask these key questions to help them connect with that sense of appreciation and fulfillment:

What are you good at?
What tasks do you enjoy?
What are the most useful things you do here?
What are you learning that will prepare you for future goals?
How do you relate to others?

These questions will help employees better understand their role and unique offering to the company. In turn, they will better integrate with their teams, they will contribute more to the mission, and they will become more productive and skilled in their jobs.

Help your employees find meaning at work, closely align new hires with their strengths and pay attention to the role needed now and how that will grow, and create a vibrant and diverse culture they can believe in. Increasing employee retention – even in trying and difficult times – is really just a matter of inspiring them to achieve great things as an invested part of your team.

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INSPIRE Your Employees with These Motivational Quotes

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Picture this; It’s Monday morning, and your team is gathering together for the beginning of the weekly meeting. Your team is fresh off the weekend and may not be in the most energetic of moods.

So you, as the leader of your team, need to inspire your employees through a motivational message during this meeting to pick them up. It’s so important to have effective business communication within your organization and employees still hanging onto the weekend it hard to have that. Here is where inspirational quotes for work or inspirational videos come in handy to get your team in the right mentality and back into a goal-crushing machine.

Here are a list of motivational quotes that come from books, movies, songs, and more to inspire your employees! The Monday blues or not, you can add these quotes to emails, power-point presentations, meeting agendas, or through other communications platforms.

1.Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.—Henry Ford

2. Becoming is better than being. —Carol Dweck, Mindset

3. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing. —Herman Melville, Moby Dick

4. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. —Thomas Edison

5. I’ve learned about the poetry and the wisdom and the grace that can be found in the words of people all around us when we simply take the time to listen. —Dave Isay

6. It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. —Joseph Campbell

7. Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path then by all means you should follow that. —Ellen Degeneres

8. It’s easy to solve a problem that everyone sees, but it’s hard to solve a problem that almost no one sees. —Tony Fadell

9. Learning never exhausts the mind. —Leonardo Da Vinci

10. If you’re alive, you’re a creative person. —Elizabeth Gilbert

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5 Keys to Effective Business Communication

What is Business Communication?

Business communication is the process of aligning expectations, sharing information, and fostering understanding between internal and external parties. In short, it’s how effective companies maintain an effective team and consistently satisfy client needs.

Every business should prioritize communication in their core values. Not only does it lead to more productive and beneficial relationships, but it helps the bottom line. Research indicates companies that focus on clear communication outperform their competitors by orders of magnitude. It’s a proven way to differentiate your firm or agency and enhance the customer experience.

Yet many businesses overlook it or take it for granted. It’s tempting to assume your business communication is clear and effective. But according to the research, well over half of internal communications professionals aren’t even measuring their efforts or success in this realm.

Key Tips for Better Business Communication

Here at Building Careers, one of our core values is open, constant, and timely communication. Our team relies on key communications principles and strategies to stand out among our competitors in the commercial real estate niche.

But regardless of the industry you serve, we believe the following tips will help you achieve measurable success internally and externally.

1. Constant Feedback

The feedback loop is vitally important to improvement. Even negative feedback can be helpful when taken to heart and applied to future situations. Being open to feedback shows others you are interested in being the best you can be.

In our searches, we routinely request feedback from our clients and our candidates. This constant stream of input allows us to make real-time adjustments for better performance and the best use of everyone’s time. Likewise, we provide regular feedback as we are constantly thinking about the interests of those we serve. Even if there are no updates, checking in with candidates and clients to let them know that allows us to build trust and put everyone at ease that they know what to expect from the process.

2. Clarity

There’s a an old saying that, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it. In your business communication with clients, keep it short and sweet. Provide clear answers to their questions. With employees, don’t send mixed messages. Make sure everyone knows what the priorities are.

3. Over Communication

The average professional overestimates their success in communicating. To be understood, you must over communicate just to make par.

In one remarkable study, people were asked to tap out popular songs while others listened and tried to make out what songs were being tapped. Those tapping estimated that about half of the songs were successfully communicated to the listeners. But in reality, only 2.5% were. State the obvious. Then repeat. Don’t assume you are understood.

4. Open and Honest

Transparency should be a given. Yet there is a surprising amount of misdirection and cloaking that take place in business discussions and communications. In fact, around 80% of workplace problems can be traced back to a lack of open and honest communication.

At no point should you mislead members of your team or clients. Proactively ask open-ended questions about potential problems or concerns and always respond genuinely. If you don’t immediately know the answer, be up front about it and then do the proper research to deliver the information requested.

5. Communication Culture

Clear and effective business communication doesn’t happen by accident. Make it a part of your company’s DNA by enshrining it in your core company values.

Emphasize to your team how important it is that they participate in open, constant, and timely communication – both internally and with clients. Let your clients know they can expect the highest communication standards from your team. This will keep you accountable and motivated.

Reward and encourage clear communication, and in the long run, it will reward you and your business.

Below we are proud to have been a part of a CREW Program Recording called Winning Communication. Please click here for the link to the program recording.

If you would like to learn more about Building Careers, contact us or email Carly Glova directly!

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4 Solid Reasons Your Company Should Partner with a Recruitment Firm

Leave a Comment / Blog, Building Careers, Employers, Industry Insights

Search firms oftentimes get a bad rap. For some companies, they’re just a necessary evil. But successful firms in commercial real estate know that throwing a failed job opening at a recruiter once in a while isn’t the path to hiring success. Instead, they partner with a recruitment firm to achieve long-term results and so much more than an occasional hire.

A Good Hire

Employee turnover is a huge concern in the different fields of CRE. In property management, for example, companies have to overcome a staggering 33% employee turnover rate. Across most industries, the national average is nearly 25%.

Why?

The reason so many employees are walking is they simply weren’t a good fit for their position. They weren’t a good hire. Sure, they looked good on paper, or maybe they interviewed well. But somehow, they weren’t the right fit.

Unfortunately, the cost of a bad hire is rather high. Estimates vary from half their annual salary to over two years annual salary when all factors are considered. But the point is that the recruitment process correlates directly to the bottom line. Efforts after the fact to improve employee retention can only go so far if your employees aren’t the right hire to begin with.

Partner with a Recruitment Firm for Lasting Results

Hiring whichever contingency recruiter comes in as the lowest bidder whenever a role opens up shows a misunderstanding for the value and strategic importance the recruiter has in your overall business strategy.

Companies who partner with a recruitment firm for the long term, means moving beyond transactional decision making to a more trusted advisory role. In this position, a recruiting agency can develop a sense of your company’s culture, dynamic, business model, and hiring needs. They ask questions a one-off recruiter might not think to ask. They can see beyond the immediate need of your current opening to needs that might develop in the future.

A trusted recruiting partner can explore alternatives in a way that mutually benefits the hiring company as well as the eventual hires, growing both in the process. Considering the organizational relationship, managerial styles, and unstated values, a recruiting partner can better find the candidates you truly need vs. what you think you need.

Key Partnership Benefits

Below are four solid benefits your company can count on when you partner with a recruitment firm as a hiring advisor.

1. Company Advocacy and Confidentiality

Partnering with a recruiting firm that shares your company’s values will allow them to evangelize what you do and keep your best interests at heart. A recruitment firm that appreciates how you value the relationship with them will be able to paint your company in the best light to potential new hires.

And sure, even a one-off contingency headhunter will sign a confidentiality agreement, but a trusted recruitment partner will truly respect that confidentiality beyond the terms on paper. Searches often involve contact with competitors. A long-term partner will value their relationship with you and go the extra mile for your confidentiality.

2. Overlooked Roles

Often, people try to replace people. A job description may be a description of the person who left, when what is truly needed is a position the hiring company hasn’t even thought of. A tried-and-true relationship with a recruitment firm means a healthier dialogue in creating the role you truly need to fill based on what your industry has to offer.

3. A Better Talent Pool

A recruitment firm maintains and grows an immense pool of qualified talent that you may not need right this moment. But you’ll know about them should the need arise. Additionally, some of the best candidates aren’t actively in the market, but may have reached out to the recruitment firm to let them know when the right role for them comes up. Your role could be the right one fore the long-term, but you won’t know it unless you tap your recruitment firm’s relationship for these “off-market” candidates. With a strong relationship in place, your “right hire” won’t slip under your nose unnoticed. And you’ll enjoy a diverse set of options.

4. Future Success

Your company relies on long-term success plans and strategies. Your best employees have likely been with you for years. Likewise, working with a recruitment firm for years is a key factor in future success. You don’t know what hiring needs you’ll have down the road. But with a trusted recruiter partnership in place, the right hire when you need it is just a call away.

Contact Carly Glova: CGlova@BuildingRECareers.com

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The Top 14 Interview Questions You MUST Ask Candidates

Leave a Comment / Blog, Employers, Interview Tips, Job Search

When you interview an applicant, you have to gather as much information as possible in a short period. Gleaning enough about a candidate to determine whether they’re the best fit for a role is challenging — but by asking good interview questions, you’ll not only get a clearer idea of their skills and experience, but also get a sense for their conversational skills, problem-solving skills and ability to think quickly.

The best way to adequately assess a candidate for both skill fit and culture fit is to ask questions that are specific to the company or role as well as broader questions that give the applicant an opportunity to show their personality and ability to think critically under pressure.

Here is a list of interview questions you must ask candidates during your interviews:

1. Tell me something about yourself that isn’t on your resume.

Job seekers carefully craft their resumes to provide the best summary of their professional experience, but you can’t learn everything about a candidate from what they put down on paper. This question is purposefully vague and allows the interviewee to decide whether they want to share something job-related or not. They may choose to tell you about their volunteer work, the sabbatical they took to travel the world or another defining experience.

The way they choose to respond to this question, and the story they share, can tell you a lot about the type of employee they will be.

Behavioral Questions Interviewers Should Ask

2. Describe a time when you had to work with someone whose personality or work style was very different from yours.

Being able to work well with others is an important part of nearly every job. This question gives the candidate a chance to show off their teamwork, interpersonal and problem-solving skills, including how they compromise, communicate and collaborate to achieve a goal or task. It can also give you deeper insight into their personality and work style.

Career Development Interview Questions

3. What are your long-term career goals?

By asking the candidate to discuss their long-term career goals, you can get a feel for how ambitious, goal-oriented and hardworking they are. Look for career goals that align with your company’s values, mission and/or goals. This question can also reveal how long the candidate plans on staying at your company. For example, if their long-term career goals can’t be accomplished by working at your company, it may not be the best fit.

Brainteaser Questions Interviewers Should Ask

4. How many jelly beans can fit in a suitcase?

This is a guesstimate interview question that doesn’t require an accurate answer. Instead, it gives candidates the chance to demonstrate their thought process. Pay attention to how a candidate attempts to solve the problem. Do they ask you additional clarifying questions? Do they break the problem down into smaller pieces? Ask them to think out loud to see their problem-solving skills in action.

Contact Carly Glova: CGlova@BuildingRECareers.com

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