The ultimate guide to essential interview questions
140 Must-Ask Questions for Hiring Managers
Enhance your interviewing technique with this comprehensive set of questions for assessing skills, fit, and leadership potential.
Hiring the right candidate goes beyond just checking qualifications; it’s about finding someone who can thrive in your organisation’s culture and contribute to its goals. But with so much riding on each hire, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the interview process and wonder if you’re asking the right questions to uncover the qualities that matter.
Our 140 Must-Ask Questions for Hiring Managers guide takes the guesswork out of interviewing.
This guide provides you with a curated selection of questions (based on our team’s 20+ years of recruitment experience) to structure your interviews effectively, assess each candidate’s fit, and make informed, confident hiring decisions.
With questions covering everything from technical skills and problem-solving to cultural alignment and leadership potential, this resource will help you build a team that’s aligned, engaged, and set for success.
How the 140 Must-Ask Questions guide transforms your interviews
Step into every interview, fully prepared to uncover the candidate’s skills, character, and fit for your team. With this guide, you’ll always be ready to ask the right questions to get the insights about your candidates that matter.
Comprehensive Coverage
With 140 carefully curated questions, you’ll be prepared to evaluate candidates on all fronts, from technical expertise to interpersonal skills and values alignment.
Focused, Purposeful Interviews
Structure each interview with questions that dig deeper, helping you assess not just what a candidate can do, but how they think, communicate, and approach challenges.
Consistent Evaluation
Follow a structured approach that ensures consistency across interviews, helping you fairly and thoroughly assess each candidate against the same criteria.
Confident Hiring Decisions
This guide empowers you to choose candidates who bring not only the required skills but also the cultural fit and potential that support long-term success in your organisation.
What is the 140 Must-Ask Questions for Hiring Managers guide?
The 140 Must-Ask Questions for Hiring Managers is a practical, structured guide filled with the essential questions you need to conduct interviews with purpose and confidence. This guide is a tool we use in our own business. With it, our recruiters and hiring managers are able to focus on the candidate qualities that matter most, making interviews more insightful and decisions more straightforward.
Whether you’re filling a leadership role or bringing on a new team member, these questions are designed to guide you through a thorough evaluation, helping you to identify candidates who will excel and grow within your organisation.
What you’ll gain by using the 140 must-ask questions
The interview process can be unpredictable, but with the 140 Must-Ask Questions, you’ll walk in prepared, confident, and fully equipped to get the insights you need.
Here’s how this guide transforms your approach:
The 140 must-ask questions
Consistency Across Every Interview
Each interview becomes a structured experience, with questions covering all essential areas. You can ensure that every candidate is evaluated fairly, no matter the role or seniority level, and that you’re capturing a complete picture to make the best hiring choice.
Deeper Candidate Insights
This guide takes you beyond surface-level questions, helping you uncover each candidate’s motivations, values, and approach to challenges. By exploring their responses in greater depth, you’ll be able to assess how well they align with your organisation’s culture and long-term goals.
Confident, Informed Decision Making
With clear, targeted questions guiding each conversation, you’ll finish every interview with the insights you need to make a confident hiring choice. This guide gives you a comprehensive view of each candidate, supporting smarter, more strategic hiring decisions.
What’s included in the 140 Must-Ask Questions checklist
The 140 Must-Ask Questions for Hiring Managers covers a range of question types to help you conduct thorough, insightful interviews and make stronger hiring decisions:
- Manager’s Behavioural Questions – Understand how candidates have handled real situations in past roles to assess their work style, problem-solving skills, and adaptability.
- Situational Questions – Gauge decision-making and adaptability by exploring how candidates would respond to hypothetical scenarios relevant to your team’s challenges.
- Skill-Based Questions – Confirm technical expertise and relevant abilities to ensure candidates have the core skills needed to succeed in the role.
- Cultural Fit Questions – Identify candidates whose values and work preferences align with your organisation’s culture, supporting team cohesion and long-term fit.
- Motivational Questions – Discover what drives each candidate to ensure their career goals align with the role and your company’s direction.
- Competency Questions – Assess key competencies such as leadership and communication to determine how candidates’ strengths align with role requirements.
- Critical Thinking Questions – Explore analytical and decision-making skills to understand how candidates approach complex problems and make strategic choices.
- Questions to Avoid – A reminder of legally and ethically sensitive areas to ensure your interviews remain compliant and focused.
Each question type is designed to uncover essential qualities, helping you conduct interviews that are both insightful and compliant for confident hiring decisions.
Download the 140 Must-Ask Questions for Hiring Managers
Ready to enhance your interviews and make smarter hiring decisions? Download the 140 Must-Ask Questions for Hiring Managers today and take the first step toward more purposeful, effective interviews.
Hello & Welcome,
I’m Alison Goodwin and alongside my partner Steve Fowles, we are the founders of the Online Business Association. Over the past 20 years, we’ve made it our mission to support business owners (like you) by sharing our expertise on how to drive meaningful change.
Led by passion, and integrity, our tried and tested methods have produced powerful results and changed the lives of hundreds of business owners.What does that change look like? It could mean streamlining your operations, scaling revenue, or building a more cohesive team to help you grow to 6, or 7 figures and beyond. We’ve helped our clients tackle these challenges and more. Whether it’s managing multi-million £/$ projects or helping entrepreneurs take their first big leap into the world of business.
The strategies we provide aren’t just theoretical – they’re tailored, practical solutions that drive real, measurable results.Our journey to where we are today wasn’t built on flashy social media campaigns or basic outreach tactics. Instead, we’ve built our entire business on one simple, yet powerful foundation: trust.We’re proud to say we operate on 100% referral from satisfied clients, each of which we consider our partners.
This is a testament to the genuine results and relationships we cultivate – and are ready to build with you.We’re not here to sell you cookie-cutter strategies or vague advice. Instead, we’re offering robust education, accredited training, and real business connections to drive lasting success.
Our goal is not just to consult but to be your long-term partner in growth. If you’re serious about making a difference in your business, we’re ready to help guide you towards achieving real, significant growth.When you join the Online Business Association, you become part of something bigger and we can’t wait to work with you!
Warm regards,
Founder, Online Business Association
