20 Interview Questions To Ask Job Candidates (2025)

The time has come to hire a new employee. You have a couple of candidates to interview, and the pressure is on to find out which one has the right skills, mindset and experience.

But how are you supposed to determine all that from just an interview? It’s possible only if you ask the right questions. 

To help you make a more informed hiring decision, we have come up with ten core competencies, and two interview questions for each, you want to inquire about the next time you’re interviewing an applicant. The competencies include:

• Career aspirations
• Ability to learn
• Conflict resolution
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Time management
• Willingness to take initiative
• Decision-making
• Prioritization
• Team leading

Based on these ten core competencies, you should look to ask behavioral and situational interview questions. This is a good way to paint the picture of how the candidate behaved or would behave in different situations in the future.

Keep in mind, these interview questions are a good baseline for you to assess a candidate. The secret, however, lies in asking the right follow-up questions. That is why we have also come up with potential follow-up questions to help you get the most out of the interviewee. 

Here are the 20 best interview questions to ask a job candidate.

1. What would make you happy in your next role?

Whenever you interview a candidate, you want to know what it is that they want. Chances are they left their previous job because of something specific. The reason for asking this question is to find out whether you can actually meet their expectations.

For example, if they go ahead and say “I want my own office space” and you can’t provide that, then maybe it’s not a good fit. Asking this question is a great way to prevent any misunderstandings from happening later on.

Competency: Career aspirations

2. What are your career aspirations?

Instead of asking “Where do you see yourself in five years?” you should ask about the person’s overall career aspirations. You want to get a glimpse into the interviewee’s mindset. A good answer here would describe any specific goals, tasks that they would like to try or achieve. From there, you can decide whether this role would fit their long-term plans. 

Competency: Career aspirations

3. Tell me about the last time you received constructive feedback

With this question, you want to learn whether the person is open to feedback. A good answer here would describe a specific situation. What did they do after receiving constructive feedback? Did they reflect and learn from it?

If the interviewee can’t come up with a specific situation, perhaps it’s a sign they aren’t open to feedback, which could hinder their ability to learn.

Competency: Ability to learn

4. Tell me about a time you made a mistake at work

This gives you insight into the candidate’s willingness to own their mistakes and learn from them. Did they reflect on the situation? Did they take any action to make sure the mistake doesn’t happen again? Mistakes happen to everyone. What matters is how the person reacts to them.

Competency: Ability to learn

5. How do you know you are doing a good job in your role?

One of the best interview questions to ask is “How do you know you are doing a good job in your role?”; simply because it lets you know what is important to the candidate. How do they measure their work? Do they have specific measurements, or are they vague about it? 

Asking this also lets you know how interested the person is about improving themselves.

Competency: Ability to learn

6. Describe a challenging workplace situation. How did you deal with it?

A good answer here would adopt the STAR technique.

Situation – Candidate describing a specific situation.

Task – What needed to be done? 

Action – What steps did they take to solve the problem? What was their role?

Result – Did they reflect on the situation? Would they do anything differently the next time?

Competency: Conflict resolution

7. Tell me about a time you worked with a difficult person. 

To candidates, this may seem like a question about the difficult person. That is not the case. A red flag here would be if the candidate actually starts talking too much about the other person. 

What you want to know is if the candidate is capable of being tolerant and empathetic. You can ask follow-up questions such as “Why did you find the other person to be difficult?” 

Also, find out how they handled the situation. Did they remain calm? In the workplace, you want your employees to be able to work through conflict.

Competency: Conflict resolution