Decision-making interview questions help you determine your candidates’ experience and competency in making decisions at work.
In this article, we discuss why you should assess your candidate’s skill in decision-making and list the best decision-making interview questions.
Why ask candidates decision-making interview questions?
Decision-making interview questions help you assess how well potential employees will be able to solve conflict and take action at work.
These questions are not meant to be asked only for managerial roles that require excellent decision-making skills. All jobs require some level of decision-making.
Employees make work-related decisions on a daily basis. For instance, hiring managers may have to select between two or more potential candidates, or a designer might need to choose between two UX patterns.
A good decision maker has excellent:
- Critical thinking skills: Be able to use reason to make the right decision for themselves and their team.
- Analytical skills: Successfully analyze and interpret information to draw meaningful conclusions.
- Observational abilities: Ability to make important observations through their five senses.
- Problem-solving skills: Assess and consider all options or variables to arrive at the best possible solution.
- Creativity: Ability to view issues and options from different perspectives and develop unique solutions.
- Leadership skills: An empathetic person who provides helpful guidance to a group of people.
Apart from looking for certain qualities, one key area to focus on is the candidate’s past performance in situations similar to what they will encounter in your workplace.
The best decision-making interview questions you should be asking every candidate
Here are the questions to ask your candidates to assess their decision-making skills:
- You have a number of different choices or options you could choose to solve a problem. what’s the process you would follow to make a decision that would result in a positive outcome?
- Describe the process or methodology you typically follow for making a decision and forming a plan of action.
- You could take two or three equally viable paths to accomplish a goal. how would you make your decision about which path to follow?
- Have you ever delayed choosing a course of action? How did that hesitation affect you and your customers?
- You have several options to pick but none of them are enough to achieve your goal. How would you decide which option to pick?
- Faced with a choice between a candidate for a promotion, a project leader, a lateral move, or a new hire, describe how you would make your decision?
- Have you ever had to make a decision that did not fall into your job responsibilities? Describe the situation, your decision, and the effects of that decision.
- Briefly describe the process you followed to pick the college you attended.
- How will you decide whether to accept a job offer that you think is a good match for your skills, salary requirements, and preferred workplace?
- When you are working with a colleague, how do you decide upon and communicate the points at which you need feedback?
- If you had the opportunity to hire employees, what criteria would you use to hire them? What’s important to you when making this decision?
More decision-making interview questions to ask candidates
- Two employees are having regular conflicts with each other and often disturb the team’s balance. How would you handle this situation?
- Describe a time you made an unpopular decision. How did you handle the feedback? How would you have handled the situation differently?
- Do you usually make better decisions alone or with a group? Why? When do you ask for help?
- When you’re working on a joint project, do you make your own decisions or do you prefer to step back and follow someone else’s guidelines?
- Describe a time when you had to make an immediate decision on a critical issue.
- While working on a joint project, you notice that some of your coworkers are falling behind. What would you do to help your team meet the deadline?
- When working with colleagues on a joint project, how would you divide responsibilities? Also, how do you arrive at this choice?
- When supervising employees, what is the best time and way to discuss possible shortcomings in their work?
- How would you deal with a demanding external stakeholder who keeps changing requirements about a specific project you’re working on?
- You want to buy new software that will help you perform your job well. You have two options, one is more expensive but has better reviews, and the other has fewer features but is within budget. Which one would you recommend and how?
Final thoughts
Decision-making interview questions allow you to understand how competent and comfortable your candidates are with making decisions.
When done right, you’ll be able to identify potential hires with sound judgement. We hope this article will help you ask effective decision-making interview questions.
Are you looking to create and conduct a survey by yourself? SurveySparrow provides you with everything you need to create and conduct a conversational survey!
Conversational surveys typically tend to boost survey responses and create pleasant experiences. Most of your respondents will complete your survey as they would be pleased to take surveys that are conversational in nature.
These surveys are different from the long, boring forms you’ve seen on the internet.
SurveySparrow provides you with a simple drag-and-drop interface and free templates.
If you’re looking to boost your survey responses and create pleasant experiences, take the conversational way and try SurveySparrow today!
Have you got any questions on asking decision-making interview questions? Got any interesting tips or hacks for asking decision-making interview questions? Let us know in the comment section below.
If you’re wondering whether SurveySparrow is the right fit for you and would rather have someone walk you through our platform, reach out to us for a free, personalized demo!
