What kind of animal would you be? Where do you see yourself in five years? HR people sometimes ask very strange questions during an interview. Some are unusual in themselves, while others seem completely innocent, yet they often have a deeper meaning. We will tell you how we do it here at Applifting.
So what should I ask them today?
Cultural harmony
When choosing future colleagues, it is very important for us to know how they identify with our corporate culture and what they are like in terms of personality. Will we understand each other? Our somewhat non-standard questions help us figure out just that at an interview.
Personality over knowledge
We often try to find out the applicant’s way of thinking and their level of dogmatism. Are those interested in working for Applifting ready to discuss even slightly sensitive topics, such as programming in PHP, or, in case of a copywriting position, the use of emoticons in a text?
Do they insist they are in the right and are not open to another opinion? Do they conduct the conversation constructively, can they look at the matter at hand from multiple angles and not take everything as a personal attack? These are fragments from which we compose a picture of the applicant’s personality.
Active approach
Knowing how communicative the person is, what he or she enjoys in their spare time, what is necessary for their work or what they have recently learned is also important for us. It is not so much a question of specific skills or the ability to learn fast as the fact that they try to move on and develop.
We also use the so-called concept of behavioural questions. These are based on the fact that experience from the applicant’s previous position indicates probable future behaviour. What was your last job? What did you enjoy about it? Which positive work experience can you best recall?
Time management
A short task constitutes a part of the admission procedure. There is nothing special about that, this is a relatively common practice in IT. But we do not set a submission deadline. We leave it up to each applicant to determine that. Thanks to this move, we can see if they are reliable and how they manage their time.
What is the strangest question or task you have gotten at an interview?
