Interview questions

Interview questions should be drawn up before the interview and shared with panel members. Ensure all panel members are clear on the questions, who will ask them, and in what order.

Ask all candidates the same set of core questions. However, you should follow candidate's responses with more probing secondary questions.

Whatever you ask should be designed to test the candidates skills and abilities against the person specification. Here are some different types of questions to consider:

• open questions should be used extensively as they invite the candidate to talk freely and descriptively
• probing questions are a good way to encourage the candidate to expand or clarify an answer
• linking questions allow you to use a candidate's response to flow into another question
• hypothetical questions should be used sparingly as they invite model answers which may not reflect the candidates' realistic experiences.
• closed questions and leading questions should be avoided as they inspire short answers which will add little to your understanding of the candidate
• multi-part questions may confuse the candidate; they also give them an opportunity to skip over the parts which they would rather not answer
• experience based questions can be used to gauge skills and competence gained in relevant circumstances
• sensitive questions There may be aspects of certain applications that require clarification, such as gaps in employment history or incompleteparts of a form. There may be perfectly acceptable explanations for this, for example, candidates may have taken time out of employment for maternity leave or caring responsibilities, or because of a health or disability issue. In cases where you have been made aware of a candidate's disability during the selection process, you should ask what reasonable adjustments the candidate would require should they be offered the post. Such a question must be sensitively posed and you should make it very clear that this is solely for information purposes. If you have any concerns about how to pose sensitive questions, speak to your HR contact before the day of interviews.

A bank of generic questions is available as a starting point for your own set of questions.