20 Questions to Ask Your Next Communication Candidate—Before You Hire
Looking to hire a new communication team leader?
Hiring for a communication position—and wishing you could dig a bit deeper than the standard interview questions? You know, the ones that ask about strengths and weakness, career plans, and why they are interested in this particular position.
On their own, these more common questions may not give you the fuller picture you're looking for. So try digging a bit deeper with questions like these--and then tell us what you'd add or subtract.
What is the best communication plan you’ve seen implemented—and what made it so?
What are some of the biggest challenges communication teams face, and how would you address those?
What metrics do you think are most important to follow and understand as a communication leader?
What parts of the communication job are hardest and least interesting to you?
What are the biggest obstacles to effectively leading a communication crisis? Share examples.
How would you allocate resources to the primary channels of communication you’d be using at our company? For example, what percent of your resources would be focused on Instagram? Facebook? Twitter? Other?
What technologies do you think a cutting-edge communication team will need to adopt in the immediate future?
What do internal audiences want to hear from their company? Is there any category of content they don’t hear enough about—or too much of?
What techniques have you found effective for creating tools that cut through the noise and clutter of today’s world?
Describe the demographic that your company serves, and how that might influence strategic communication planning.
What communication issues are most frustrating to you?
Where do the biggest opportunities lie in the field of communication?
Reference a company you observed that recently handled a hard communication issue well.
How do you measure success for your team? Yourself? Your organization?
How can you cultivate a higher level of writing for your writing staff?
What would you consider a good review cycle process (how many revisions are appropriate, who’s involved, etc.)? And how would you manage your team and your customers to reach the ideal?
What traits would you look for in the different kinds of communication team members in your company?
What makes a good story?
Give me your best example of a story you produced.
Where do you turn to determine best practices in the communication field?
It can also be helpful to ask the candidates to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being poor and 10 being top of industry. Here are some attributes you might want to include—but make the list your own, of course!
Productivity
Creativity
Organization
Accuracy
Strategic thinking
Calm in a crisis
Adaptability
Data-driven decision-making
Integrity
Vision
Execution
Resilience
Decisiveness
Accountability
Courage
Delegation
It can also be helpful to ask the candidates to show you examples of some of the best work in the industry and to review some work samples that will be typical in the job for which you’re interviewing. This can give you a solid insight into their view of what constitutes excellence in communication.
Most importantly, spend time thinking about the kind of person you want—and formulate questions that help you assess candidates for fit. Because even if the skill set is strong, if the fit is wrong, it won’t work for you or for them.
What questions have you found helpful?