This post categorizes the frequently asked questions in HR interviews. You can save these questions for later review by downloading the pdf of HR interview questions.
HR Questions:
Stability at work
- How long would you expect to work for us if hired?
- What are your career options right now?
- What will this job give that your previous job doesn’t?
- What is the profile that you are looking for, how will this company give you while previous doesn’t?
- Why are you leaving your current position? (Or) Why are you looking for a job change? (Or) What is the reason you are leaving previous organization?
- If another company offers you better salary than us, what will be your reaction?
- Where do you see yourself 5 years from now? (Or) What are your short term goals?
Work ethic questions
- What is more important to you: the money or the work?
- If you won $10 million in lottery, would you still work?
- Tell me about a time when you were accountable for a mistake you made. Did you take responsibility for the mistake?
- Describe your work ethic.
- What is your philosophy towards work?
- Are you willing to put the interests of the organization ahead of your own?
Personality test questions
- What are your greatest strengths?
- What would your previous supervisor say your strongest point is?
- What are your greatest weaknesses?
- Do you have any blind spots?
- What do your co-workers say about you?
- Tell me about a situation when your work was criticized? (Or) How do you handle criticism?
- What makes you angry at work?
- Do you get angry with your team mates if they don’t cooperate?
- What irritates you about co-workers?
- Tell me about a time when you helped resolve a dispute between fellow team mates.
- Tell me about the most fun you have had on the job.
- Tell me honestly about your boss’s strengths and weaknesses.
- Tell me about a problem you had with a supervisor.
- Do you prefer to work alone or do you work better in groups?
- Looking back, what would you differently in your life?
- What was the toughest decision in your life you ever had to made?
- What are your professional goals?
- What have you done to improve your knowledge in the last year?
- Do you consider yourself successful? Why?
- Who has inspired you in life and why?
Compatibility Questions
- Technically, what kind of work would you prefer?
- Would you lie for the company?
- Briefly describe an ideal position for you?
- Describe your ideal company, location and job?
- What kind of person would you refuse to work with?
- Why do you want to join this industry?
- What makes you the best candidate for this position?
- What motivates you to do your best at work?
- What was the toughest part of your last job?
- What have you learned from mistakes on the job?
- What has disappointed you about a job?
- What do you expect from this organization?
- What has been your biggest professional disappointment?
- What position do you prefer on a team working on a project?
- How do you propose to compensate for your lack of experience?
- Do you think you are overqualified for this position?
- Would you be willing to relocate if required?
- Are you willing to work overtime? Nights? Weekends?
Communication skills
- Tell me about your hobbies and pastimes?
- Which is the most unforgettable moment in your life?
- How do you overcome stress at work?
- What according to you, are the skills required to be successful in IT industry?
- If you were hiring a person for this job, what would you look for?
- Why should I hire you? (Or) Why do you think you are the best candidate?
- Explain how you would be an asset to this organization.
- Can you describe your previous company’s work culture?
Ego Questions
- What is the main role of a HR in an organization?
- Why do you want to work for this organization?
- What do you know about this organization?
- Can you list the clientèle of this organization?
- On a scale of 10, rate me as an interviewer.
Salary Negotiation Questions
- The Salary question – How much do you want?
- What kind of salary do you need?
Tacit Questions
- Is the candidate over qualified for this position?
- Will this candidate be satisfied with the profile and nature of work offered to him?
- If I offer a job, is there a chance this person will quit and start his own business?
- Is this person too outspoken or too reticent?
- The company where candidate is currently working seems to be an unpopular brand. Will this hire affect my company’s brand image?
- Will this person be able to pick up the work assigned to him?
- Is this person lacking any basic skills or manners?
- Is there anything that this candidate is trying to hide from us?
Background check questions
- Tell me about yourself.
- Questions related to passport and visa.
- Questions related to previous month Salary slips.
Rationale behind asking these questions
Stability at Work The reason why the employee is quitting current job is of utmost importance for HR managers. They want to know why exactly the employee was motivated to quit the current job. They want to make sure that the employee doesn’t decide to quit the company before working for an year or two. So this category of questions are indirect ways of asking the question, “How long will you stay with us after hiring you?”
Work ethic questions are asked to check the whether the candidates posses values such as Loyalty to the company, reliability and accountability at work. Is work just another menial task that fetches you money or do you enjoy your work? Is money your only priority at work place?
Ego Questions. In interviews, some HRs ask a few irrelevant questions such as “What is the role and importance of HR Manager in an organization?”, to make themselves feel important and to satisfy their ego. Other questions that fall in this category are those that ask about their employer organization such as “What do you know about this company?”, “Why would you like to join this company”, to make themselves feel better from inside for working for that company. You should try to exaggerate and lift the interviewer’s ego by answering in a boasting and optimistic manner.
Communication skills. There are some questions that have no relation to the job position being offered, sometimes these questions are personal. They go something like “whom do you like more your mother or father and why?” Such questions are asked to get the candidate talking, to determine how good their speaking, persuasion and presentation skills are. These questions are especially important for the job positions that involve communication with customers.
Compatibility questions are asked by HRs to confirm if the candidate is a good fit into the corporate culture. For example, if the job requires the candidate to work in night shifts, and the candidate doesn’t have prior experience working in a night shift, this might become potential problem for the candidate in future which may result in employee’s frustration and eventually resignation from that job.
Personality test questions is a category of interview questions which includes all the questions that the interviewer asks to know about the candidate’s strengths & weaknesses, personal vision & goals, values , attitude towards work, people and organization. How good a candidate is who has no clarity about his/her professional goals? How good is a candidate who has problems working smoothly with people?
Aptitude questions are being asked by the interviewers to determine the smartness of the candidate. Since HR managers’ job role is often disconnected with technical stuff, they don’t and can’t ask technical questions to the interview candidate. They test people by asking puzzles or role play questions. Puzzles in general, because they indicate to certain extent, the problem solving ability of an individual. Role play questions are asked to check how you behave in a particular scenario that they are familiar with. For example, the hiring manager may ask you to pretend to be receiving a call from an angry customer and you are supposed to pacify him by assuring him that his issue would be looked into immediately.
Salary negotiation questions are of utmost importance for the candidates who appear for the interview. 90% of time, the reason for job change is for a better pay check. So the candidate is most eager to answer these questions. From HR perspective, these questions are asked to find out whether the company can match the financial requirements of the job candidate.
Tacit questions are the most dangerous of all these categories of interview questions. They are usually the unspoken concerns of the interviewer that lead to rejection of candidates. They are also few of the most frequent causes for a job rejection.
Background check questions are being asked to avoid hiring the spurious professionals, to check misrepresentation of facts, to check whether the candidate is not faking any details on his resume – such as fake degree or fake experience or fake salary slips etc. And in some places, where there are region specific things to ensure that the candidate legally qualifies to be hired. Issues such as citizenship, visa status etc.
HR interview questions can be broadly classified into the following categories.
HR Question Categories:
- Stability at work
- Work ethic test questions
- Loyalty
- Ownership
- Dedication
- Money mindedness
- Personality test questions
- Strengths and Weaknesses
- Honesty
- Personal vision & values
- Attitude towards work
- Attitude towards people
- Attitude towards organization
- Compatibility Questions
- Compatibility with company culture
- Compatibility with job role or project
- Aptitude questions
- Puzzles
- Case studies
- Communication skills
- Speaking skills
- Presentation skills
- Persuasive skills
- Customer handling skills
- Ego questions
- Praise the HR
- Praise the Company
- Salary Negotiation Questions
- Tacit Questions
- Background check questions
- Check previous work history
- Check authenticity of work experience
- Clarify other region-specific issues
Human Resource Managers have simple concerns on behalf their employer organization. Their interviews are usually much easier to generalize than the technical ones. That’s because HR managers have very simple objectives — they want to check whether the candidate is loyal, honest, convincing, smart and sane. In simple words, a HR manager wants to avoid a bad hire. From their previous experiences, they knows what kind of people they don’t want to hire.
Hiring new candidates is very responsible task for the Hiring Managers and Human Resource Managers. Their decision whether to hire or not to hire a candidate, can add value to the company, shape its future, bring new energy and enthusiasm to the existing work force.
A bad hire can prove very expensive to the company. If the candidate that they hire is not capable enough to perform his/her daily activities at work, the team for which he/she works will have to suffer working with that non-performing resource until new hiring takes place. At times, it gets very difficult for the companies to fire people based on employee’s poor performance, owing to many factors such as the company policies, loss of morale among the fellow employees, etc.
Even though the company takes a bold step to fire the unwanted resource, replacing this poorly performing resource is tough, as fresh hiring means additional costs to the company and wastage of time of the hiring managers for conducting interviews. Not only that, the hiring managers would be held accountable for the bad hire that took place. Which could mean that if the hiring managers do a bad hire, they may lose their reputation among their superiors which may lead to a bad performance review in their annual appraisal.
To avoid all these complications, a responsible hiring manager asks himself/herself the following questions before confirming a candidate with an job offer.
- Is this person authentic?
- Will this person work for the company at least for the next few years?
- Will the company be able to recover the costs incurred to him by the company?
- Does this person have ethics at work?
- Is this person sane?
- Does this person fit into our company culture?
- Is this person smart?
- Can this person speak well?
- Why should I care to hire this person?
- Can we financially afford to hire this person?
- Do we have any concerns related to this person’s profile?
References:
Download HR questions in this article as PDF
Comment , if you would like to add a question to this list.
About the Author: Sridhar Jammalamadaka is the Editor of Interview Mantra. He's a typically non-typical Software Engineer from Pune, India. He likes entrepreneurship, web technologies and Micro Controller programming. He enjoys playing cricket and piano (but rarely does these activities). Through this website, he wishes to gather a large community of aspiring engineers, entrepreneurs and professionals from all parts of the globe. You can connect with him on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/sridhar.j 
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