Interview questions that actually predict performance
Most interview questions are inherited rather than chosen. They get asked because they were asked at the last company. Some carry real signal, many carry none, and a few actively mislead.
Questions worth asking
"Walk me through how you did X."
Pick something from their CV that matters for your role and make them narrate it in detail. People who did the work can go deep indefinitely. People who were adjacent to it run out of specifics in about ninety seconds.
This is the highest yield question in most interviews and almost nobody asks it properly, because it requires the interviewer to actually follow the detail.
"Tell me about a time you were wrong about something important."
You are looking for whether they can identify their own error without deflecting, and whether anything changed afterwards. Candidates who cannot produce an example, or whose example is really a story about someone else's failure, are telling you something.
"What would your last manager say you needed to improve?"
Better than asking for a weakness directly, because it is attributed and therefore harder to dress up. Follow with: and what did you do about it?
"Describe a situation where you disagreed with a decision and had to carry it out anyway."
Almost every job involves this. The answer shows how they handle authority, whether they raise objections through legitimate channels, and whether they undermine decisions they lost.
"What is something in your field that most people get wrong?"
Reveals depth quickly. Someone who genuinely knows a domain has opinions about it. Someone who has been near it recites consensus.
"Why this role, at this company, now?"
Not to hear flattery, but to find out whether they have thought about it. A candidate with no answer beyond needing a job is a retention risk whatever their skill.
Questions that waste everyone's time
- "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Trains people to give a rehearsed answer that predicts nothing. If you want to know about ambition and retention, ask what kind of work they want more of and less of.
- "What is your greatest strength?" Self assessment with an obvious incentive to exaggerate.
- Brainteasers and puzzle questions. Long popular, and poorly supported as predictors of performance for most jobs. They measure exposure to puzzles.
- "Sell me this pen." Only defensible if the job is improvised in person selling. Otherwise it tests performance under an artificial condition.
- Anything about personal circumstances. Family plans, marital status, age, health. Not relevant, and in many places not lawful to consider.
The follow up is where the signal is
A prepared candidate has a polished answer for every common question. The polish comes off with follow ups.
Whenever someone gives you a smooth answer, ask: What specifically was your part? What did you try first that did not work? Who disagreed with you? What would you do differently? How did you know it worked?
People describing real experience answer these easily. People describing a story they constructed start generalising. You will hear the shift.
Listen for "we" and "I"
Ask about individual contribution and notice which pronoun comes back. Consistent "we" throughout a story about their own accomplishment usually means they were present rather than responsible. It is not automatically disqualifying, and it is always worth probing.
Ask the same questions of everyone
None of this works if each candidate gets a different interview. Pick your questions in advance from the requirements of the job, ask them of everyone, and score against a standard you wrote before you met anyone.
Remember they are interviewing you
Good candidates have options. An interview that feels like an interrogation loses people you wanted. Ask hard questions, and leave real time for theirs, and answer those honestly, including about the parts of the job that are difficult. The candidates who accept after hearing the honest version are the ones who stay.