Screening interviews are the first step in any interview process. Done right, this pre-screening approach will weed out poor fits and ensure you rapidly focus on the potential stars.

If your screening interviews are already perfect, ignore this article.

What are you looking to discover with your screening interviews?

Successful screening interviews are outcome-focused. Decide what you want to look for and then ask questions that uncover that information. We recommend an interview process designed to answer the following questions:

Past career success

• Does the candidate show an upward trajectory in their career?

• Does the candidate's career steps between each company make sense

• Does the candidate's proudest moments lead to strong positive outcomes for their company?

Startup values (behavioural interviewing)

• Locus of control

• Humility

• Hunger

• Emotional intelligence

Technical skills

Do they have the technical skills to do the job (we won't go into detail in this article) but we have already provided the following interview questions:

• Startup interview questions for sales professionals

• Startup interview questions for product professionals

Management excellence (when interviewing managers)

• Can they empower their team?

• Can they communicate well?

• Can they manage performance well?

Should I do a screening interview in person or on video call?

With technology moving forward at a brisk pace, video-screening interviews are becoming increasingly common. Although it's more difficult to understand the candidate's body language, we believe that the positives vastly outweigh the negatives

• You will have screening interviews with a high volume of candidates and it's good to make things as easy as possible for your potential hires

• AI summarization and querying make your screening interviews much more valuable as you don't have to vigorously scribble down notes

Kicking off the screening interview

Before diving in, it's really important to start any screening interview with rapport building. If the candidate isn't comfortable they won't show you their natural selves and they won't have any fun. And isn't that what being a startup is all about?

If you are a natural conversationalist, spend five minutes having a natural conversation. If you need to use a question, we love 'tell me about something that you're totally passionate about outside of work.'

Resume deep dive - kicking off the screening interview

The best type of screening interview questions aren't questions at all. They are more a guided conversation through a qualified candidate's history, asked in a way that surfaces the things we want to know.

Take the three most recent roles that the candidate has, and go through each one of them with the following question set.

Continuing the screening interview by focusing on the most recent role

By this point in the screening interview process, you should have a clear understanding of past success and you may have learned about some of the candidate's values by how they answered your interview questions.

Top hiring managers don't ask interview questions for the sake of talking but are asked to discover something about the person, their broad skill set, personal qualities, values and experience.

Once you've received a satisfactory answer to an interview question, you don't need to ask again!

The next step is to fill in the gaps, using their most recent experience (or last three years) as the frame.

Internal locus - the best startup value

Startup companies need people with an internal locus of control. It's beyond vital! If you weren't able to clearly ascertain locus of control in your initial set of interview questions you must ask again.

If we could only choose one personality trait to ascertain in a screening interview, it would be this.

Why is it important?

Want those values?

Ask the following screening interview questions during your screening interview:

• "What was your biggest professional mistake at MOST RECENT COMPANY and what did you learn from it?"

• "Tell me about a recent project that didn't go as well as you hoped"

It's a tough question but the internally focused individual will focus on their own mistakes while the externally locused person will give you an answer where others are partly to blame for the fault.

Screening interview questions for humility

Humility is important to assess in a screening interview. The behaviour presents itself as a lack of excessive ego, or concerns about status. They are quick to share credit, praise others freely, and sometimes even forego credit due to them in the interest of celebrating the team’s collective win. They demonstrate strong alignment towards the team’s goals and prioritize collective wins over individual ones. Humble team players are self-confident, but not arrogant. Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Ask some of the following questions during your screening interview:

What’s the last thing you learned and applied professionally, what was the impact?

• We want to see evidence of READING SOMETHING, WATCHING SOMETHING or WITNESSING SOMETHING, then trying this in their day-to-day

• 🚩If the answer is wishy-washy or simply, I saw this in the news or something that clearly wasn’t implemented, they are not humble.

• Knowledge workers (eg software engineers) are required to do this as standard and so asking them this question may not tell you how humble they are, it is probably more a showing of if they do their jobs properly.

Tell me about the last time you apologized to a colleague/subordinate.

• This should be an extremely clear story. If they candidate has to really press to think of an occasion they probably haven’t apologized to a subordinate recently. That doesn’t make them immediately not humble!

• Humble people accept they will make mistakes.

• This question also shows good EMOTIONAL SMARTS

Can you tell me about someone at a similar level who is better than you in an area that really matters to you?

• The question speaks for itself. You want a candidate to demonstrate a genuine appreciation for the people who are even more skilled. Humble people find this question easy while ego-driven people will struggle to answer this question.

Tell me about a time when someone gave you critical or constructive feedback?

• More relevant for seniors than juniors. Juniors probably always get this feedback, however, seniors can ‘decide to not receive it’.

• Senior professionals set the culture of their teams and those who don't set up an environment where they can receive constructive feedback are probably not humble.

Describe a work situation that brought out the worst in you. Why did it bring out the worst in you? What did you learn?

• Is the person able to look at their behaviour objectively and figure out a time when they weren't at their best? This question is excellent for emotional intelligence.

Hunger - the next stop in your screening interviews

Hungry people are always looking for more. They are intrinsically motivated, diligent, and have a strong desire to do more by going above and beyond. Hungry people do not have to be pushed by their managers to perform; they are constantly looking for more responsibility and thinking about the next step and the next opportunity (for the team). This is exceptionally important for many startups where hunger is one of the key advantages that you have. One more vital trait to assess in a screening interview.

Tell me about the hardest you’ve ever worked?

• Compare this to other candidates. You want to see well, and truly hard work and you want to see an element of understanding that these things happen.

• There will be a degree of joyful sacrifice and the candidate will be grateful for the experience.

• A startup environment is a hard-working one!

Describe for me a time when you were disappointed in your performance.

• Hungry people have an urge to outperform. Expect disappointment in achievements that other candidates may be proud of

Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond to achieve something great

• Similar to the first interview question, how above and beyond is their above and beyond?

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the capability to conduct oneself in a group situation and deal with others in the most effective way. Emotionally intelligent people ask good questions, listen to what others are saying, and stay engaged in conversations intently. Smart people exercise great judgment and intuition around the subtleties of group dynamics and are fully aware of the effect their words will have on the team. Ask the following questions during your screening interview:

Tell me about a difficult colleague you worked with and how you improved the working relationship.

What would your friends say is your most annoying habit?

What kinds of people annoy you the most and how do you deal with them?

Describe a time when you were able to anticipate a land mine and plan your upcoming actions accordingly.

Give me an example of a time you used your political savvy to push something through for approval.

Tell me about a time when you were unable to successfully navigate through a political situation.

Describe a situation where, because you were aware of the nonverbal dynamics of a person or group, you adapted your communication and turned the situation around.

Screening interview for the management team

Management is all about the move from doing to delegating. A great manager understands the stages of each person's personal development and adjusts their approach for each of their team members to create the maximum output. They empower the team to do their best work, hold their team to account and most importantly take all ownership for the mistakes of the team when communicating outside that team.

There are many facets to great managers but given startup interviews can't be five hours long, we feel that the following three aspects are the most important to assess.

Screening interview questions that discover if they can empower their teams.

What is your philosophy behind a high-performing team?

• Important to dive into each point, and get examples of this philosophy in practice.

• We must connect the philosophy to the outcomes.

What metrics do you use to determine if your team is doing a good job?

• The important thing he does is to press and move from hypothetical examples to actual ones. EG, what did metric X look like in the last X months?

Tell me about the highest potential person you've had the opportunity to work with. How did you support their development?

Screening interview questions that discover if they are good communicators

What type of communication approach have you found most helpful to communicate to a team?

Tell me about the two most opposing personalities you have on your team and how you communicate with each

How does your own manager know what your team are doing/delivering?

Screening interview questions to determine if they can manage performance

Tell about the last person you let go. How did you identify they were an underperformer, walk me through what you did?

Describe your procedures for evaluating your direct reports?

How do you ensure best practices are shared amongst your team? Can you give an example?

• If one person does something really well, the manager should create an opportunity for others to learn

Tell me about a time you needed to implement a new (or significantly raise an existing) performance standard for your team. What was the standard? Why did you need to raise it?

• Add: How did you communicate the change? How did the affected employees respond when they were told? Were people able to meet the new performance standard? If not, why not?

Give me an example of a time you had to tell a direct report that you were dissatisfied with his work.

Walk me through the last performance review you gave

• There is a difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

• Here we see exactly how they work with their team

Further resources for a great job interview

If you're a hiring manager and want to deliver a successful screening interview, we'd recommend the book Who by GH Smart.

If you want to think about the hiring process from end to end, then look at our resources on how to write a great job description

Otherwise, here's to a great screening interview.