The cost of a bad hire can rise up to 30 percent of that worker’s annual earnings. In other words, hiring bad employees will cost a business tens of thousands of dollars every year.

If you’re on the hiring team or in charge of recruitment, you certainly don’t want to make hiring decisions that result in financial losses for the company. You do everything in your power to ensure you’re hiring the best employee – every time.

There are many things that you need to look at when hiring, but one of the most important is asking the right questions.

In this article, we’re sharing some of the most important questions to ask job applicants and what answers you should expect.

Let’s get into it.

How Did You Learn About This Job Position?

Does it really matter how a job seeker learned about the position you’re looking to fill? What matters is the position attracted applicants and you have already picked out a handful to interview, right?

Well, if that’s what you’re thinking, you’ll miss out on getting an important piece of information that will help you determine whether you’re interviewing an ideal employee.

How the interviewee answers this question can give you some insight into their suitability for the position. If you advertised the position on multiple platforms, such as your company website, industry job boards, and social media, you’ll be more interested in a job seeker who learned about the opening from your company website. This likely means the interviewee has a deep interest in working at your company, seeing that they kept tabs on your website’s careers page.

This, though, doesn’t necessarily mean applicants who learned about the position from other sources are any less interested in working at your company. However, when determining who gets the job becomes like splitting hairs, you may be inclined to settle on the applicant who learned about the position on your company website.

What Attracted You to This Position?

People apply to job openings for different reasons. Some make speculative applications, which means they’ve no specific interest in the company. Others are attracted to the compensation package.

Although you wouldn’t expect an applicant to say they applied speculatively or because the salary is great, you should ask the question anyway. You can tell a lot about the way an interviewee answers the question.

If an employee is hesitant before answering, it’s a sign they weren’t expecting the question, and they’re probably looking for a suitable answer. A well-intentioned interviewee will have a quick and meaningful answer.

Why Are You a Perfect Fit for This Role?

By the time you’re interviewing someone, you’ve already reviewed their resume and established that they have what it takes to do the job.

However, you still want to hear it from the horse’s mouth because resumes sometimes only tell half the story. You want the interviewee to give solid reasons why they think they’re a good fit for the job.

Pay attention to whether the applicant describes their professional training. Are they mentioning the skills that are fleshed out in the job requirements?

Bear in mind that you can also test whether indeed the applicant possesses those skills. If you’re hiring for a role that needs great office skills, find out why it’s crucial to test for those skills.

Besides suitability to a certain role, an applicant who will potentially make a good fit should discuss the organization’s culture and why they think they’ll fit right in.

How Would Your Colleagues Describe You?

This is a variation of the popular and often ineffective “describe yourself” question.

Given an audience, any person will mostly say good things about themselves. No applicant is going to say things that will undermine their chances of getting the job.

This is why it’s better to know what colleagues think about the person you’re interviewing.

You can also follow up this question with one that requires the interviewee to describe some of the relationships they have with current or past workmates. You should learn a lot about an applicant’s interpersonal and teamwork skills from how they answer these questions.

What Are Your Biggest Weaknesses?

No one is perfect. Especially not in the workplace.

Your applicant should have a clear picture of their weaknesses in the workplace. If someone says that they don’t have any weaknesses, it probably means they haven’t faced challenges where they came up short because they lacked certain skills.

The interviewee should also give you a brief on what they’re doing to overcome those weaknesses.

What Noteworthy Thing Can You Reveal About Yourself?

Job seekers use resumes to describe almost everything about their professional lives. Everything a job seeker would want you to know about them is in the resume.

However, there’s a chance they left out some bits of information that could be useful to your decision-making. Thus, this question.

Keep an open mind here. You just want to see if there’s more to the interviewee than meets the eye. You could use the opportunity to judge how quickly they can think on their feet because it’s a question many people don’t see coming.

Make Smart Picks When You’re on the Hiring Team

Whether you’re the head of the hiring team or part of the team, your primary goal is to bring in the best talent. It isn’t an easy task, but with the right recruitment expertise, you can improve your chances of making the right hiring decisions. Ask these questions and you’ll move closer to getting the best hire.

Keep tabs on our blog for more recruitment advice.