Unconventional Interview Questions for 2014

As an HR professional, a large part of your job is to recruit and sift through the pool of talent to find the right applicants for open jobs. The interview questions you put to hopeful candidates can tell you a lot about whether they have the right outlook, skills, and potential to contribute to your company's bottom line. Here are a few of the more unconventional interview questions you can ask applicants while you're conducting interviews this coming year.

Assuming that you've screened the candidates before conducting interviews and that they all meet a minimum standard, the interview questions you ask will be aimed mainly at establishing whether each candidate is a good fit for your team. An unconventional way to gauge a candidate's fitness for your company's culture would be to probe the person's attitude toward authority. Asking applicants to consider a hypothetical conflict of interest—for example when one supervisor gives one set of instructions and another unwittingly contradicts them—will reveal a lot about their attitudes toward hierarchy and management in general.

Another useful, if unconventional, way for a hiring manager to assess a candidate's deference is to invite a negative remark about the company, such as, "what most concerns you about coming to work here?" A candidate who immediately has a response, or one who gives an evasive answer, might be less of a fit than the candidate who has to ponder negative interview questions before expressing criticism or who simply confesses to not knowing enough to answer.

Off the beaten path of standard interview questions are cultural inquiries. Asking someone to summarize a favorite book or to recommend one for the whole team to read will tell you quite a lot about the subject's outlook, attitude, and cultural orientation.

In a similarly lighthearted vein, it's a good idea to drop the odd cultural reference between interview questions—if only to place the candidate's sense of humor and to get a feel for how social interactions with other employees will work out. There are countless ways of doing this, and they don't strictly have to be formal interview questions. Try asking an applicant to sign something with a pen that you know to be out of ink. When it doesn't work, take it back and intone, "This is a dead parrot!" If the candidate gives you a knowing chuckle—or, even better, plays along—it's likely you have a new hire with a healthy sense of humor. Feel free to use references from whatever shows, books, or songs are most popular among your company's employees because it will help you fine-tune your idea of the applicant's personality in a way that most conventional interview questions just can't.

The interview process is usually imagined as a stodgy, overly formal affair. It doesn't have to be that way, however, as the interview questions you ask will often allow quite a lot of leeway for assessing candidates. Don't be afraid to be unconventional because it might open up the best window possible into what your new hire is really like.

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