25Founders: What is Your Most Effective Interview Question?

As a follow up to last month’s post on the 25Founders, a collective of successful NY entrepreneurs, members were asked: When interviewing a potential employee, what is your most effective interview question?

Edward Solomon, Net at Work co-founder answered: Recruiting is extremely important to Net at Work. Our consultants and engineers spend most of their time with our clients. Our internal support staff also interacts with our clients or supports those that do. Even as we have grown to more than 150 employees, my partner (and brother) Alex and I are still actively engaged in the recruiting process. We want to make sure that we are hiring the best and the brightest. When interviewing a new candidate, I do have a few key questions that I ask which help me to understand and get to know the candidate.

Question 1: What did you think of the Net at Work website?

If a candidate doesn’t prepare for the interview by reviewing our website then the likelihood of the candidate getting a job with us is virtually nil.

Question 2: What do you enjoy most about your current job?

Candidates have a hard time bluffing on this one. If there are issues this usually draws them out, and if they love their current job, then how serious are they about finding a new one? You don’t want to waste the time on people that are not serious about the job search.

Question 3: What would the people that you have reported to in the past say about you and your performance? And if this is for a management position, what would the people that reported to you say about you and your performance?

I love this question. It allows the candidate to comfortably brag about themselves in third person. It generally draws out examples of interactions with former managers and staff. Plus, as we will be following up with reference checks, we will be able to compare the candidate’s response to their reference’s response.

Visit the New York Enterprise Report for answers by other 25Founders members.