Your job description is specific and clear. You involved all the relevant staff and managers in the selection process. You screened out unqualified candidates. You completed dozens of interviews. You asked excellent interview questions.

Sure, you have a gut feeling, but guts have been known to be wrong. So how do you know if you’ve found the right candidate? Looking beyond the specific job skills and experience, here are a few important interview questions to consider for any new hire:

• Is the candidate highly adaptive? Agility, the capacity to think on your feet and take on new roles and embrace new ways of thinking, are critical in an ever-changing environment.
• Did the candidate ask great questions? Not the ones they prepared in advance. The ones that occurred during the interview that showed they can listen, synthesize and ask thoughtful questions about the heart of your business.
• Are they curious? What else do they want to know?  Are they lit up with questions? A great employee needs to be a great learner, being voraciously curious is key to high productivity and breakthrough thinking.
• Can they connect the dots? Being able to see patterns in disparate information and make sense of mountains of data without being overwhelmed is a valuable organizational trait for complex organizations.
• Are they team players? Are they comfortable in the role of Chief or Indian? They need to believe that their thinking is improved by collaboration and diversity.
• Are they enthusiastic about people and relationships? Kind of a no-brainer, but good reminder that enthusiastic people tend to generate positive feelings and productive energy for their projects and initiatives.
• Can they admit to mistakes? Can they easily describe three failures, and what they learned from them? Be concerned if they can’t bring a few mistakes to mind.
• Do they see learning as pleasure? Great candidates are eager and rapid learners, and they pursue learning on their own.

Once you’ve mastered the interviewing, selection, and hiring process, you can continue to improve your employee experience as you gain insight into the entire employee lifecycle — from onboarding to exit surveys, culture, and employee engagement, as well as ongoing pulse surveys. Implementing your employee listening strategy with state-of-the-art survey tools and a powerful reporting platform, as well as gaining the valuable insights you need to build an exceptional workforce, is made simpler with our Newmeasures assessments. Get in touch with Powers Resource Center to get started!