A Million Dollar Question...

A Million Dollar Question…

You need a candidate with the “right” attitude. I had written about it in my post..

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/right-attitude-everything-shivam-arren/?trackingId=bcZ4xgJSTumn05kVTjG82A%3D%3D

The next question is how to find if the candidate sitting in front of you has the right attitude?

Once you have checked the skills needed for the job, you need to ask a few questions which have no right answers. These questions will help you look at the approach the candidate has. That will give you a clue about his/her attitude. Some of the examples are given below:

·      Tell us an instance where one of your colleagues went out of the way to help you. How did you respond to him/her?

(Shows if the candidate had a good rapport with her colleagues and has gratitude towards them)

·      Tell us three best things about your previous company/ boss/ manager?

(Every company /boss has few good points. Did the candidate notice them and learnt / applied that learning in her job / life)

·      Did you have any differences with your previous managers? If so, how did you handle them?

(In every job there are instances when people have differences. Its important to know how those were handled. There cannot be a situation where the candidate did not have any differences with her boss / colleagues. It is an unreal situation.)

·      Tell us about a situation where you felt stuck and what did you do to overcome that?

(This can tell about how does the candidate handles / approaches a tough situation. How do they respond to a difficult circumstance)

·      Can you tell us an instance from your previous job where for a project you were overlooked and what did you do about it?

(This may show how the candidate handles rejection / failure. How she approaches the same.)

·      Who all did you tell about this interview before coming here?

(This shows how many confidantes, real friends and family does the candidate has.)

·      Which is the book you are reading currently or you read last and when? Why did you read the particular book?

(Shows the aptitude / interest of the candidate and the fact if she is interested in learning)

Above are only examples to check on the attitude of your potential candidate. There can be many more questions which can be created basis your requirements.

For the most part, you want to listen for those cues that reflects qualities about the candidate - about helping others, being creative, finishes her work, does whatever it takes to succeed and makes the whole team better.

In this line there are also a lot of Puzzle/trick questions which need candidates to apply common sense / logic to solve them. Someone with a positive attitude or out of box thinking can solve them. Some of them also entails candidates asking a right question to the interviewer in response to the original question and after receiving clarification, then proceeding to answer that question. There is a whole treasure of these you can find by searching a bit on Google. I have given a few samples below, which I found on Quora (www.quora.com)

1. I have a box which is locked and can be opened only with its key and can't be broken. It has an offer letter for you inside. I have only one delivery boy with me who can carry only the box but not keys. I wanted to send the offer letter to you, if I send you the box, how can you get the offer letter?

2. You are strapped with a bomb vest. The timer on the bomb reads 1 minute. In front of you, there are two buttons, one of the buttons, when pressed would completely neutralize the bomb. The other button however would increase the speed of countdown timer by a factor of ten. The two buttons are identical in every respect. Which one will you press?

3. You are an astronaut and right now at an arbitrary planet. You are in a room with 10 glasses of samples of milk with poison dissolved in one of them and nothing else. You have one rat to test the sample. If the rat drinks the poisonous sample at a given time, it dies 10 hours later. You have 24 hours to find out, which sample is poisonous. How would you do that? And yeah, the gravity there is 1.5 times the gravity of earth.

4. There is one scooter which has 2 tyres and one stepney/spare (meaning 3 tyres). Each tyre can run up to max 5 km. How long will the scooter run till?

5. It's heavily raining. You are in a 2-seater car (no one beside u). You came near the bus stop and saw a lady who seems that she is just about to die, your childhood best friend who once helped you saving your life and the dream girl of your life. Obviously you can ask only one of them to sit beside you. Who will it be?

I do hope you found the above article useful / helpful. I really do look forward to your comments / suggestions on this article and my other articles.