At executive level, an interview works both ways.

Most senior candidates are not actively looking to move. While you are assessing whether they can do the job, they are deciding whether the opportunity, and your organisation, are worth leaving their current role for.

The questions you ask matter. Avoid:

• Inappropriate personal questions about age, health, family arrangements, religion or other protected characteristics. Keep everything relevant to the requirements of the role.
• Clichéd trick questions such as “What is your greatest weakness?” They usually produce rehearsed answers rather than useful evidence.
• Ridiculous curveballs involving crayons, penguins or estimates of how many windows there are in London. If you want to test someone’s thinking, give them a realistic, work-related scenario.

So, what should you ask instead?

Focus on three essential questions

A well-structured interview should help you establish:

1. Can they do the job?
2. Are they genuinely motivated to do it?
3. Will they work effectively within the organisation and leadership team?

Competency-based interviewing is one of the most effective ways to answer these questions. It moves the conversation away from polished claims and towards evidence of what someone has actually achieved.

It also gives interviewers a consistent basis on which to assess candidates. Rather than relying on instinct, each person can be evaluated against the same skills and criteria.

Use the STAR model

For each essential competency in the job description, ask the candidate to provide a strong example from their experience. The STAR model gives you a simple structure for exploring their answer:

• Situation: What was happening, where and when?
• Task: What needed to be achieved, and why?
• Action: What did the candidate personally do? How and why did they take that approach?
• Result: What changed as a result of their actions?

Do not accept a high-level answer. Follow-up questions will help you distinguish between someone who led the work and someone who was simply part of the wider team.

The strongest examples are usually:

• Recent (ideally from the past five years)
• Completed, so the outcome is known
• Relevant to the requirements of the role
• Tangible, with evidence such as financial savings, improved performance, reduced risk or earlier delivery
• Detailed enough to show how the result was achieved

Candidates should also draw on different examples where possible. If every answer relates to the same project or role, it may suggest their experience is narrower than it first appears.

Ask questions grounded in the role

Useful competency questions often begin with:

• “Tell us about a time when you…”
• “Give us an example of a situation where you…”
• “Talk us through how you approached…”
• “What was your personal contribution?”
• “What would you do differently now?”

The detail should reflect the challenges the successful candidate will face. For example:

• Commercial: “Tell us about a significant commercial decision you made on a major programme. How did you balance cost, schedule and scope?”
• Leadership: “Give us an example of when you translated an organisational strategy into a clear plan for your team.”
• Safety: “Tell us about a safety risk you identified that others had missed. How did you manage it?”
• Operational readiness: “Describe a programme you helped transition from delivery into operation. What challenges did you face?”
• Integration: “Give us an example of how you brought multiple projects, partners or systems together into one programme.”

Explore motivation properly

Motivation is as important as evidence that they can do the job.

Ask what attracted them to the opportunity, what they hope to achieve and what would need to be true for them to accept. Explore any concerns they have about the organisation, remit or timing.

Relevant, consistent and well-structured questions create better conversations, and ultimately lead to better hiring decisions.

Every candidate we put forward completes a detailed competency-based interview with us, so we have plenty of experience developing questions that uncover the evidence that really matters. If you would value some guidance on structuring your interviews or choosing the right questions, we would be happy to help.