Hire Better Employees With Values-Based Interview Questions

Companies in the top quartile for employee engagement are more profitable than their competitors who score in the bottom quartile, Gallup research has found. These companies typically benefit from higher productivity, lower turnover, and increased employee morale. One way to make sure your company has high employee engagement and morale is to hire and retain employees who fit your company culture and values. So, how do you do that? Here’s how to create values-based interview questions.

What is Values-Based Hiring?

Often, recruitment efforts focus heavily on experience and skills. While these characteristics are important, this type of hiring places special emphasis on the values, motives, and personality of the applicants. The goal is to identify the core values of the organization and incorporate them into the recruitment process to hire more employees who share those key values.

How to Identify Your Company Values

Of course, before you can jump in and start asking your next candidate values-based interview questions, you have to identify your company’s values. You can start by creating a list of the values you’d like the company to embody and then ask your team members if they’d add or remove anything from the list.

It’s also important to know which values are important for a particular position. In that case, ask hiring managers and employees currently in the role questions such as:

• What values are important for this role?
• Why are these values crucial?

Ask Values-Based Interview Questions

Once you’ve settled on a list of core values, you should be able to craft meaningful interview questions related to each. The goal is to find candidates who can describe past behavior and achievements that match up with the values of your company. For example, you could ask:

• What are your three top professional values?
• What is a time you demonstrated each?
• What three values do you think are a priority for this role?
• We’re looking for someone with [three to four top values]. How have you demonstrated these values at past jobs?

Ask these same questions of every candidate so you can make a fair comparison.

Learn More Ways to Improve Your Hiring Process

Defining your company’s core values and asking potential hires values-based interview questions can make a positive impact on your company’s productivity and growth. It can also work wonders for employee retention. Get more expert hiring strategies from Monster.