What interview questions should be asked to ensure the greatest employee fit?

When making a hiring decision, everyone involved wants to ensure that the potential new employee will be a good fit in the organization as a whole. Finding such a perfect fit is not always easy. A 2007 OfficeTeam poll revealed that 59 percent of HR managers admit to having misjudged an applicant's fit for a role. To help make the right match, HR and hiring managers should ask the following questions during the employment interview:

• What type of work environment brings out your best performance?

• What type of work environment are you least likely to thrive in?

• What did you like best/least about your last job and why?

• Considering your greatest accomplishments in previous roles, what were the factors that allowed you to be successful?

All screening and selection processes ultimately arrive at the same place: following the interview comes the final decision-making moment in which both parties, the candidate and the hiring manager, will have to either say yes or no to each other. In order to make sure that yes is the best answer for both parties, consider asking, and personalizing, the following eight questions:

1. Do you feel that you fully understand the job as we have described it?

2. If you do understand the job, the expectations and the qualifications, could you please explain it back to me so taht I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have reached the same understanding?

3. Are you fully confident that you have the skills to succeed in this role and if not, what makes you think you can learn them quickly enough?

4. Do you feel the concerns we have shared with you should in fact be concerns?

5. If you were to draft your own performance appraisal, what is it that you would like to be measured on and why?

6. Have we described the type of work environment that will make you happy?

7. What makes you most optimistic about your chances of success here? What are the differences in the job or the environment that makes this a better fit than other jobs you have had or looked at?

8. Will you please take three days to consider this opportunity and within those three days, please contact me to let me know if you feel this is the right decision for you?