Unique interview questions are an essential part of hiring the right candidate. They should provide insight into the person’s thinking skills and personality.
Here are 14 of the most interesting and unusual interview questions to ask your next candidate.
Icebreaker Interview Questions
We all know that interviews are nerve-wracking. Even the strongest candidates can be thrown off by the interview process and may not demonstrate their true aptitude. To help mitigate this problem, add some icebreaker questions to your docket to loosen their nerves.
Question 1: If you could visit any planet, which one would you go to and why?
Who doesn’t love an outlandish (literally) question such as this? It’ll be interesting to watch the interviewee’s thought process with this unique interview question.
Question 2: Dogs or cats?
An age-old debate!
Question 3: Describe this job to an extraterrestrial who just landed on your front lawn.
This is one of those unique interview questions that kills two birds with one stone. It helps loosen nerves, but it also allows you to get a first glance into a candidate’s understanding of the job.
Creativity Interview Questions
Many jobs require creativity and quick thinking. These unique interview questions are your first attempt to understand the candidate’s ability to be creative. How does their thought process work, and are you impressed by their out-of-the-box thinking?
Question 4: How would you pitch our company to a friend?
You want to uncover how much the candidate knows about your company. The best interviewees are the ones who come prepared with knowledge of the company.
Is it clear they looked at your website, understand your ICP, read your blog, checked out your social media, and more? Can this candidate make sense of your unique selling point, competitors, strengths, and weaknesses?
Question 5: Name five uses for a picture frame, other than its intended use.
This is a thinker, especially when you aren’t expecting it. The five uses a candidate comes up with don’t matter as much as their thought process. Ask them to explain why they chose those five uses and talk aloud as they arrive at each conclusion.
Question 6: How would you transport a herd of elephants safely from Africa to Asia?
This unique interview question may seem silly, but in reality, it’s a great way to gauge how a candidate tackles an unexpected question. There’s almost no way they wrote down and recited an answer to this!
As with all of these creativity questions, a candidate’s exact answer doesn’t matter; instead, their thought process and rationale are interesting.
Question 7: What are three things you’d change about our website and why?
First, this forces an answer to the question of whether or not the candidate did their homework and checked out your site. It’s probably a red flag if they answer: I didn’t actually look at your site.
This unique interview question is excellent because it supplies you with valuable and practical information. Perhaps one of the suggestions is so strong you want to run with it. This gauges a candidate’s aptitude within the realm of actually doing work for your company.
Emotional Intelligence Interview Questions
Some studies suggest that up to 90% of top performers are highly emotionally intelligent. With that in mind, you want to gauge your candidate’s emotional aptitude with these unique interview questions.
Question 8: If you have more projects than time to dedicate to them, how would you manage your workload?
Dealing with stress and staying organized are significant components of emotional intelligence. Is this candidate able to sort projects effectively? Do they ask supervisors about priorities? Do they stay calm, or do they get flustered?
Question 9: How do you handle conflict in the workplace?
We encourage you to throw this one into the mix when considering which strategic interview questions to ask candidates. It’s one of those unique interview questions that allows you to understand how a candidate would handle a real-life occurrence that many of us go through.
Conflict is inevitable, and how a person handles it speaks volumes about their emotional intelligence. You want a candidate who reacts rationally, controls their emotions, and manages the situation diplomatically.
Question 10: How do you pick out birthday gifts for your friends?
It doesn’t matter if your candidate is a good gift giver or not; what matters is how they go about figuring out what gift to give their friend.
Part of emotional intelligence is empathizing with others and understanding their needs — does this candidate apply that logic to picking a gift?
Question 11: How does it make you feel when someone criticizes what you’ve done?
The most emotionally intelligent people value feedback. Is this candidate one who gets defensive or prefers not to receive criticism? Or do they keep an open mind and use it to improve? Consider adding this in when figuring out what questions to ask when interviewing someone.
Behavioral Interview Questions
How does a candidate work through specific situations? What’s their behavior like in certain scenarios? These unique interview questions help you find out.
Question 12: If you were the CEO of our company, what’s the first change you’d make?
You can gain significant insight from this unique interview question. What does the candidate see as your company’s biggest challenge? What’s their leadership decision-making like?
Question 13: Tell me about a time when you disliked your work, and why?
Self-awareness is a large part of success. Can this candidate recognize when their work wasn’t up to par, and what was their reaction? How did they rectify the situation?
Question 14: What’s a goal you set recently and how did you achieve it?
Being goal-oriented is another component of success, personally and professionally. How does this candidate set goals and follow a roadmap to accomplishing them? Does it seem like this person accomplishes their goals frequently, or do they fall short?
Final Word
Unique interview questions help you glean essential parts of a person’s candidacy. Do they seem like the type of person who’d work well at your company?
Looking to hire for a senior leadership position with these unusual interview questions? Jennings Executive can help you simplify the recruiting process and find the best candidate possible. Learn more today!
