Ask Job Candidates This Key Question

By Marc Zao-Sanders for Harvard Business Review | May 26, 2021

As a hiring manager, there’s one key question you should ask every job candidate: How do you learn? Of course, you want to bring in employees with impressive achievements and qualifications, but a person’s future performance will largely be determined by how intentionally and systematically they develop their skills. So spend some time digging into the question of learning during the interview process. Ask the candidate about something they’ve learned recently and how they could apply it to the role for which you’re considering them. Be open-minded about what counts as learning. They might have taken a lesson or developed a new perspective from online courses, books, people, poems, songs, films, conversations, observations, reflections, memories, and more. So inquire about what kind of content the candidate tends to rely on to acquire new skills and insights. To emphasize the importance of learning on your team, you should also be prepared to answer the question yourself.