What is skills-first interviewing?

Skills-first hiring and skills-first interviewing shift the focus of the applicant’s qualifications like education and previous job experience to specific skills that support success in the position. While the traditional qualifications may prepare the applicant for the role, it’s possible to gain key skills in other ways. With skills-first interviewing, you can assess job-specific abilities through skills-based interview questions, job simulations, formal assessments and reference checks.

Benefits of skills-first interviewing

Using skills-based interview questions to evaluate candidates offers several benefits, including:

• Broader applicant pool: By expanding candidate requirements, you consider applicants who might otherwise be eliminated for not having the right degree or job experience. This gives you more options for your new hire.

• Reduced bias: Biases during the hiring process put some applicants at a disadvantage. These unconscious biases cause interviewers to favor certain candidates over others. For example, some hiring managers show preference to people who went to a certain university or who have a specific degree. Focusing on skills can take the emphasis off formal education and give all applicants a fair chance based on their skills and abilities.

• Increased agility: Stacking your team with diverse skills prepares you for success. Many skills transfer to different roles and projects, allowing your team to pivot to keep up with industry changes.

• Fewer talent gaps: An emphasis on hiring for abilities can help close the skills gaps on your team. In other words, you aren’t hiring just to fill a role, you’re choosing candidates based on the talents they add to your workforce.

Information you gain from skills-based interview questions

In a skills-based interview, the questions are targeted and reveal whether the candidate has the skills you expect and give you insight into how they might perform in the role. Asking skills-based interview questions helps you assess a candidate’s self-awareness and confidence level. When candidates answer with detailed, relevant examples from their past, it indicates they understand the expectations for that skill.

Developing skills-based interview questions

Because you have limited time during an interview, your questions need to be effective and targeted to the position. Use these tips when choosing skills-based interview questions:

• Identify specific skills: Develop questions based on specific abilities listed in your job description. For example, a teacher job description includes lesson planning as a required skill. You might ask the candidate, “Can you walk me through your process for developing a lesson?” or, “Tell me about a time when you had to change a lesson plan to meet the needs of your students.”

• Know how you want to use the data: Establishing your hiring criteria and knowing how you’ll use information about skills helps you develop your interview process. For example, when interviewing for an open teaching position, , you might have a student population with diverse learning needs and need a candidate who can meet the varying skill levels of students. Questions such as, “How do you ensure your lesson plans meet the needs of students with varying learning styles and skillsets?” can give you a detailed idea of how they can adapt to their environment.

• Develop open-ended questions: Avoid yes-and-no questions, as they limit the amount of information you receive from candidates. Asking them to explain how to accomplish a task or describe a time they encountered a specific situation encourages them to share details.

• Include a mix of question styles and topics: Variety keeps the interview interesting and helps you gather a wider range of information to use for your decision.

• Create a scoring sheet: An interview scoring sheet helps define your ideal answers. It also assists you in evaluating the quality of the responses you receive.

• Involve multiple people: Gathering interview questions from the full interview team, including HR department members, hiring managers and colleagues, gives you a well-rounded selection of questions. These individuals might suggest questions you hadn’t considered.

Topics in a skills-based interview

Explore the following areas as you prepare your interview questions.

Hard skills

A candidate’s hard skills are the technical abilities needed to carry out the job duties. A person learns hard skills through education and experience. They’re often specific to a particular role or career. Examples of hard skills include:

• Industry-specific software

• Computer coding

• Foreign language

• Budgeting

• Copywriting

• SEO

• Database management

• Electrical wiring

• Welding

For example, when interviewing a software tester, you might ask a hard skills interview question like, “What is your process for identifying bugs in a software program?” This question helps you understand how the candidate applies their technical knowledge of finding bugs during the software testing process.

Soft skills

In contrast, soft skills relate to ways of completing tasks. While an individual can develop soft skills, many come naturally. Soft skills affect how a person carries out a job and interacts with colleagues or customers. Examples of soft skills include:

• Time management

• Integrity

• Communication

• Creativity

• Empathy

• Emotional intelligence

• Dependability

An example of a soft skills interview question is, “How do you handle differences in communication styles within your team?” This question asks the candidate to reflect on their communication skills and how they deal with potential conflict.

18 common skills-based interview questions

The following list of skills-based interview questions can help you get started when putting together an interview:

1. How do you manage changes to the scope of a project?

2. How do you approach a new project to determine if it’s a worthwhile idea?

3. Tell me about a time when you had a communication breakdown with a team member.

4. Tell me about a situation where it looked like a project was going to fail, but you turned it around.

5. How do you keep all the moving parts of a project organized?

6. Walk me through your process for allocating funds when you’re budgeting for a project.

7. How do you approach a situation where a work process is inefficient or ineffective?

8. Describe a time when you had to quickly adapt to a major change in your work environment.

9. How do you prioritize tasks when managing multiple projects or deadlines?

10. Tell me about a time when you had to learn a new tool or technology quickly to complete a task.

11. How do you ensure effective teamwork when leading a group project?

12. Describe your approach to problem-solving when you encounter unexpected issues.

13. How do you stay current with industry trends and advancements?

14. Tell me about a time when you had to handle a difficult or sensitive situation with a colleague or client.

15. How do you ensure your presentations are effective and engaging?

16. How do you set performance expectations for yourself and your team?

17. Describe how you maintain the quality of your work under tight deadlines.

18. How do you handle feedback or criticism from supervisors or peers?

FAQs about skills-based interview questions

Should all interview questions be skills-based?

Having a mix of interview questions gives you a well-rounded look at each applicant. While skills-based questions help you assess their abilities, adding other types of questions enables you to evaluate other traits. Consider behavioral, situational and motivational questions as well.

How can you make your skills-based interview more effective?

Know what skills you want from candidates and choose effective ways to assess those skills. The questions you ask should go beyond the surface level to gain deep insights into the candidate’s skills. Using a structured interview format creates a thorough, consistent experience for all applicants to ensure a fair assessment. It also helps to use interview scoring sheets and take notes about the interviews to review each candidate’s performance.

What are other ways to assess the skills of your job candidates?

Check candidates’ resumes thoroughly to look for descriptions of skills and concrete statistics to quantify those skills. For example, a candidate who lists their sales statistics and demonstrates increases in sales showcases their selling skills with data. During the interview process, consider including a job simulation task, such as role-playing or a sample project. For some professions, a portfolio of previous work exhibits the candidate’s abilities. Additionally, formal testing evaluates specific skills with a score attached, enabling you to easily compare candidates.