Many moons back when I started off my career as a HR person, I had a chance to attend a training program. All the HR folks used to have this once a year get together and just bond. I was briefed by my boss that, being the lowest in the food chain, I had to just take the opportunity to get to know the big fish in HR. Being a really obedient kind of person I took that advice to heart. I spent the next tea break running around that huge hall like a headless chicken collecting names and faces. I will tell you upfront that I have difficulty remembering zillions of names with matching faces. Within fifteen minutes of this maniacal pursuit of perfection, I discovered that the names and faces were all a big jumbled up noodle soup. I gave up. The break was over. All newbies were asked why they had joined Human Resources. Most of us tried to look cute and said, “Because I loooooove talking to people” or that “I am a people’s person” or that all my friends love telling me their problems and so I thought I should be in HR”. Over the next few years reality struck us between the eyes and blew all those cute statements to smithreens. But even now there are HR people lurking around in organizations who say, they are in HR because they “like being with people”. Hmmm… but dude, do PEOPLE like being with you? If like me you get heebie jeebies when people give that as their reason to choose HR, do something about it. Nip this tendency in the bud. The next time you interview HR people, spend the first hour asking them these questions. If they answer them confidently without too many disclaimers, then that is your HR person for the next few years. About the current employer Caveat: Whatever is not in the public domain or cannot be shared for confidentiality reasons should not be asked for during the discussion. These are some questions that help you understand if the HR person has really been a business partner or was it just a lot of sweaty nothings 🙂 1. What is the competitive scenario of that industry. How has it changed over the past three years. What do you think are factors that will impact the industry over the next three years. What data do you have to support these assumptions? 2. How does your company’s go to market strategy differ from the competitors. Which one os better and why. What has been the greatest advantage or disadvantage of using that approach. 3. What are the major consumer trends that are impacting the business? What is driving the change? What are some of the white spaces in the market? What will it take for an organization to reach those consumers? What should be investments the company should make to bring down those costs? What is the latest technological innovation that will dramatically impact the way customers choose your company’s products? Are there new demographic segments that are emerging, or going away that will affect your consumer base strongly? 4. What percentage of your time do you spend with your organization’s customers and suppliers? What do you think the suppliers or vendors’ pain points are? What are the regulatory requirements of the company’s product? What are the recent legislative changes that have had a major impact on the way the company does bnusiness? 5. What are the innovations you have done in your assignment(s)? How did the innovations come about? What alternatives did you think of before choosing this option. What is the biggest drawback of the solution you have recommended? If you look at your approach of implementing your idea, what went well and what could be done better? For the new assignment Problem Definition and Planning Approach: It is always useful to ask for the candidates ideas on how they would approach an actual problem that the business has. It gives the hiring manager great insight on how the candidate goes around redefining the problem? Breaking down the information, creating a project plan, talking to experts, research or benchmarking are all approaches that are possible. Ability to Innovate: Once the applicant has outlined the problem definition and planning approach, you could now check how innovative the person is. Does the person try the beaten path? Does the person come up with alternatives? Does the person have out of the box ideas? Incremental innovation or transformational innovation – what is it? (Check out that video on the innovation process and how Google uses it. ) Deep functional skills and knowledge gained through application: Functional skills that have not been applied in the business scenarios are unproven. Of course if you are hiring someone for whom this will be the first job, then this it is OK to test depth of knowledge and perhaps a deeper grill on what the internship projects or term papers have been about. All that it does to check if the person goes deep or is happy skimming the surface. Stay warned, these habits may show up often in a work setting as well. Career path and motivation: If there is a happy fit with the candidate and the current role, most employers jump in to close the deal. Find out what drives this person. What are the career aspirations the person has and what time frame does the person wish to achieve them. Do they want a career as a generalist or as a specialist? This will be an important way to check for a match between the options available within the organization and whether the time frame that the candidate has in mind will match what the company would offer. Whoever said hiring good HR people was an easy task?
—
Written By
Interview Questions for HR Applicants
Comments
22 responses to “Interview Questions for HR Applicants”
-
Indeei it will be helpful for the hiring managers and even for all HR professionals who can still check their deviations from actual professional path.
-
Hi there,I looked over your blog and it looks really good. Do you ever do link exchanges on your blog roll? If you do, I’d like to exchange links with you.Let me know if you’re interested.Thanks..
-
Helpful. Will pass it around with due credit, if you don’t mind. 🙂
-
Very interesting set of observations. Many HR professionals are so caught up in day to day transactions that the big picture of being ‘relevant’ to clients / customers gets missed. Thanks for your thoughts!
-
“do PEOPLE like being with you?”.. Excellent point. I car pool with two line managers and the horror stories I hear from about their HR Departments. Its not difficult to see why so many business managers see us HR guys in a negative light. Frankly speaking most are just happy being in a transactional role and avoid taking decisions.
-
Excellent article. Point 4. i.e. What percentage of your time do you spend with your organization’s customers and suppliers? What do you think the suppliers or vendors’ pain points are? – is something, honestly, we HR folks dont do. This is definitely a redirecting feedback for me personally 🙂 We are so held up with internal customer service that we miss out on actual market data
-
Nice one – have to keep this in mind for the future 🙂 – For the count – a lot of my own friends keep rutting the ‘love people’ thing – thats more because a lot of them came into HR and then thought as to why did they do so – in order to explain the same to companies coming to campus. Cliched rite? 🙂
-
i asked a person with an MBA in HR if she had tried joining the HR function of the organisation she said ‘no’. i asked her why? she said she wants to be a ‘trainer” …”soft skills”…in the “training function”…so is “training a function of HR”…she says “NO”.three cheers!
-
“Amazing gyan…. loved every bit of the post…… Strategies are always linked to the Business goals and organizational goals are a comination of individual as well as business objectives……..The questions shared by you reflect your depth and experience towards professionalism…..”tx so much for sharing!Keep Rocking!”
-
Nice Post Abhi, These tips can help many freshers in HR sector..
-
Thanks Abhijit for sharing your thoughts, it brings in a wider perspective to the HR’s role. Most often, the overall picture of the business strategy and market scenario takes a backseat for HR professionals……..your thoughts will definitely set the trend to bring in a change !!!Best Regards,Veena V
-
I found this very interesting”What are the career aspirations the person has and what time frame does the person wish to achieve them. “Sometimes functional skills and preferences turn out to be quite different when you actually join? Is there any scope of Lateral career transition to another industry. In the western world, there are career change specialists and career coaches who are absent in India. I have a blog for that purpose- Make your passion your profession
-
Very interesting and useful read Abhijit. Keep writing.CheersAkanksha
-
Thanks Abhijit for sharing these enlightening thoughts and very useful for HR Professionals, will share with others too.Look forward for more such articles.Cheers!Wilma
-
Thanks for this article Abhijit!Being an HR student I sincerely feel that the notions of “friends of people” / “People pleaser” / “Being with people” and many such more could be removed as HR is a much more responsible role and requires even deeper understanding of any business. If a student says, “why do we need to strategy for HR?” or “How would finance be useful for an HR?” it is a sad state of affairs.Human Resource is what drives any business and a Human Resource Manager must understand every bit of it.
-
there are professional career coaches out there that charges a small fee `.~
-
nice infomation for HR sector and alos very useful for Freshers and giving nice tips and also am giving one link just click the link get the Details of interviewsRegards
-
My coder is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on several websites for about a year and am concerned about switching to another platform. I have heard good things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can import all my wordpress content into it? Any kind of help would be really appreciated!
-
Hi..I am happy your post was available for reading. It’s highly thought-provoking, informative, bold, original as well as creative.This particular data has given me a brand new perspective on this topic. Thank you..Nice blog tooo 😉
-
I was reading throught some of the posts and i locate them to be altogether attention-grabbing. sorry my english is not exaclty the actually best. would there be anyway to transalte this into my vernacular, spanish. it would in reality better me a lot. since i could compare the english lingo to the spanish language.
-
Hi there, You have done an incredible job. I will certainly digg it and personally recommend to my friends. I am confident they’ll be benefited from this site.
-
Oh really?
Leave a Reply