Interview Questions - Hire Advocates

When interviewing a potential new hire, you should be sure to include questions that will clearly display if the person will easily become an advocate of your organization. Typically, you might ask "Why do you want to work for us?" and "What did you like best/least about your last job?" These questions are fine, but look for more questions that will help you identify great advocates. Here are some ideas: 1) Tell me two great stories of things that happened in your last job. 2) How often do you talk to your family and friends about your current/last job? What % is positive and negative? Give me some examples of what you say. 3) What products and services do you like to talk about? How many people are you likely to tell if you really like something? 4) Do you have a website? Blog? What are the addresses? 5) How many social groups do you belong to online and off? (Keep in mind it may be inappropriate to ask specifics about these groups.) 6) What do you think the best qualities of our organization are? 7) What have you heard about our organization, good or bad? 8) What is a company you admire and why? This is just a list of ideas. You may find some more appropriate for your business. However, if you make advocacy one of the criteria for new hires, it gives you another metric to judge applicants and it could be the single most important ROI factor if you get a super advocate.