The purpose of any job interview question is to gauge whether the candidate is right for the job and vice versa.
To accomplish this, job interviewers tend to ask three types of questions. The first type are questions that look for platitudes and help flush out candidates who have not done their research, such as, “What are your greatest strengths?” The next type is a brain teaser, which allows you to see some of the candidate’s skills and personality. The third one is a question aimed to discover if the candidate can handle tasks that come with the job they want, something like, “How would you handle …?” followed by a specific job situation.
There is a job interview question, however, that doesn’t really fit into any of these three categories but which reveals massively valuable information, Inc. reports:
“To do your best work, how do you need to be managed? Feel free to use an example.”
This question uncovers the candidate’s self-awareness, motivation and insecurities. Self-aware candidates will answer immediately and cogently. Clueless candidates will probably describe something that they did rather than something that their manager/teacher/mentor did.
A big advantage to this question is that it can’t be gamed because the candidate won’t know the management style of the person for whom they’ll be working. Read the full story.
