New interview questions continue to surface as hiring companies attempt to further segment candidates between duds and studs.
An interview question suggested by Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO at HubSpot and Blogger at OnStartups.com for entrepreneurs is at first glance a unique question to ask and certainly puts the interview candidate on guard with another seemingly negative interview question that could potentially stump even the most poised candidate.
“What concerns do you have about our company?”
This interview question enables the hiring company to learn a few added tidbits about the candidate. For example…
How much does the candidate know about the company?
What the candidate believe are potential issues going in.
What the candidate view as challenges with your company.
Hiring managers need to be prepared for positive and negative responses to such as an interview questions because transparency with interview candidates can generate a multitude of different answers — responses that may be welcome yet unexpected.
So, as a candidate how do you answer such a potentially damaging interview question?
Start with outlining what you learned about the company during your discovery phase.
What specific challenges do you know about them? Upcoming merger? Recent product quality issues? Issues with customers?
Ideally, outlining what concerns you have with the company are expected, but be sure to provide specifics as to how you plan to overcome and help resolve those issues as well. Remember, there are “push and pulls” with every business challenge.
So, don’t overlook the importance of how one issue effects the company — and its internal departments and teams.
Think about how concerns effect the big picture of the company, yet don’t overlook how those same concerns effect individual employees as well.
Think about …
Employee Retention
Retraining/Cross-Training
Cost Controls
Internal Team Relations
Customer Service/Management
Management/Support Staff Relationships
Sales & Marketing Efforts
New Product Development
Warehousing/JIT Delivery Systems
… and everything else that is within your scope of expertise.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
One concern or issue trickles throughout the entire company — so you need to identify what areas are negatively affected and address those areas accordingly. Identify the obvious; but, use your “super powers” to think about what the company may not have identified or considered yet.