The Challenge

Leading questions are a trap for unsuspecting interviewers because they provide clues about the desired answer and make it easy for Sales & Marketing candidates to fabricate answers that align with your expectations.

These often start with phrases such as, “Tell me about an occasion when…”, then proceed to give prompts about the response the interviewer is looking for.

Imagine being asked, “In this role it’s important to deal with complexity. Tell me about a time when you’ve had to balance competing priorities and how you overcame it?”

If the initial statement wasn’t a big enough pointer, it then suggests they want to see how you ‘balanced’ priorities, and ‘overcame’ the situation. This makes it easy to deliver a response that ticks all the boxes, however, these questions fail to provide insight into all the times you may have failed to handle complexity!

The Alternative

Avoid qualifying your questions with statements about why it is important to your company or the role you’re interviewing for.

Then to prevent the use of leading statements in your questions, pre-script them so you don’t accidently blurt out the answer you’re looking for.

Instead of the previous question, try simply asking, “Have you got any examples of when you have been working with competing priorities?”

Avoid at all costs following up with the phrases such as, “…and how you dealt with this?”, then simply pause and allow the discussion to flow.

Follow up with questions into how this made them feel and you will get far greater insight into their natural working style.

If you would like more support in the search & selection of top FMCG commercial talent, please get in touch with our team:

Manchester — 0161 274 9184

London — 0203 196 0896

Blogs & Vlogs