Hardly a day goes by without another article promising a single question by which to accurately assess candidates. Whether such headlines play to our need for shortcuts to everything in life or in fact tap into a deeper frustration with the complexities of interviewing, the result is the same ….an endless supply of magic bullet questions.

Consider but a few such gems…

• Inc. Magazine published an article titled, ‘The only interview question that matters’ in which they put forth the following question…’What single project or task would you consider the most significant accomplishment in your career to date?’ Really?? That’s it? That will cover all interviews for all jobs? Well, actually, no. If you read the full article, the writer admits that it is not this single question that will generate the most insights, but rather the 20 questions that follow. It is in fact those probing ‘how’ and ‘why’ and ‘what did you learn’ questions that shed the most light. Perhaps the article would have better been titled, ‘The only opening interview question that matters’. Even then, I am not so sure.

• The World Economic Forum published an article titled “This CEO has one interview question he’d use to hire someone on the spot’ which argues that the magic question is ‘What are the qualities you like least and most in your parents?’. The logic here, if I understand it correctly, is that IF you can get a candidate to open up on this rather personal, not-job-related issue, it can be expected that ‘they will exhibit the qualities of their parents that they like, and work hard to do the opposite of what they don’t like’. OK….if you say so.

• Fast Company weighed in with an article titled ‘The One Interview Question that will help you make the best hire’ . Their question, which they say seeks to get ‘deeper thought and greater insight that can actually be applied’ is ‘Why shouldn’t I hire you?’ Hmm… tricky.

• LinkedIn asked five ‘leaders’ for their single interview question Their questions ranged from, ‘Tell me about your family’ to ‘Tell us a story about something that’s happened in your life.’ to “When in your life have you been so passionately focused on an activity that you lost track of time?” Right answers, anyone?

I can go on and on and on. Questions range from the quizzical to the comical. In the latter category, of which there are no shortage, consider the article where one person says that after interviewing 20,000 candidates, he has come to believe that the only question that matters is ‘What do you want?’. There you have it, so simple.

Magic questions shed light on what the questioner believes is most important in hiring excellence. For some it is positivity and energy, for others it is values, for yet others it is passion, resilience, intelligence, curiosity, or perhaps emotional intelligence. One article claimed that Jeff Bezos focused on ‘accountability’ as the key attribute when hiring. While all such attributes are credibly important, the breadth of opinion attests to the complexities of hiring. And it is not just which qualities matter, but also to what degree (remember that passionate and obsessive are not that far apart on a scale) and how do they interact? No matter how you try, assessing candidates still comes down to figuring out whether they can do the job, will they do the job, and will they fit. No one question, as of yet, addresses all those questions for every company in every context. Nonetheless, expect the magic questions to keep coming and all of us to keep pondering them.

About the Author

Robert Hebert is the founder and Managing Partner of StoneWood Group Inc., a leading executive search firm in Canada. Since 1981, he has helped firms across a wide range of sectors address their senior recruiting, assessment and leadership development requirements.

Contact Robert by email at [email protected] or call (1) 416-365-9494 Ext. 777