If you have made it through the first stages of applying for a job thanks to a well-crafted resume and a great cover letter, good job. The next step is the interview process where you will have to answer questions face-to-face. Interviews are an important part of the candidate selection process, and they give you an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to answer questions on the spot, while also showing the hiring manager your personality. There are some common questions that get asked for any interviewee, but it is also helpful to be prepared to answer questions specific to the job you are applying for. These chief human resources officer interview questions are asked frequently in the interviewing process, and the answers provided are good examples of how to respond. Prepare yourself for your job interview by studying these questions and thinking about how you would tailor your unique answer.
- What do you see as HR’s most important role in this company? …
- What are the main responsibilities of this position? …
- Does your organization have a Chief Human Resources Officer? …
- How do you see this company changing in the next five years?
Interview Series: Chief Human Resources Officer Lisa Fitzgerald
5 Common Chief Human Resources Officer Interview Questions & Answers
I remember when as a coordinator for a city works I had to pull together a group of people to deal with a river clean-up project. I was required to gather not only volunteers, but also to select some paid staff members who would deal with directing certain aspects of the project. In order to do this, I developed a set of interview questions for each person applying to the team. We were looking for individuals with experience, and also people who were trustworthy with the more sensitive portions of the task. We asked people about their previous experience as well as their reasons for wanting to become a part of that particular city works project. After conducting interviews, it was my responsibility to select the best candidates for the project.
4.Does our culture differentiate us?
Your culture is unique – or at least it should be. How you define and build your organisational culture should be a differentiator and a source of competitive advantage. All too often however, it isn’t.
Definitions of culture are often mapped back to just four elements: integrity, collegiate behaviour, customer focus and speaking up. Does that sound familiar? Few directors could argue the importance of these traits, but their universal relevance also makes them very generic – and that’s not what you want your culture to be.
For example, our organisation recently helped a client define “direct honesty” as a cultural trait; close enough to “speaking up” but also capturing the candour, if not bluntness, that was evident in all our interactions with them. Directors should challenge their organisations to express their culture in a way that is authentic and recognisable, but also distinctive.
3.Are we taking a holistic approach to building culture?
There are two things many firms get wrong when they put in place a plan to build culture; they focus too much on the outputs, and they tackle the drivers of culture in isolation.
Firstly, the outputs. It is critical that boards (and CHROs) realise that culture is an output, not an input. Understanding this helps shape how you change it.
To put it in simple terms, consider this: if you target job candidates with low integrity and incentivise them with a bonus scheme that only rewards the best performers while the lowest performers are terminated, then you will almost certainly create a culture of toxic rivalry. Measuring employee views on this is useful, but if you want to actually stop employees stabbing each other in the back then you need to change your recruitment and incentive structure: tackle the input, don’t just measure the output.
Not only should there be a focus on the inputs, but there should also be a recognition that this needs to be holistic; hiring for collaborative skills and enshrining this in the culture is laudable, but if you then promote and reward based on individual performance, you are sending conflicting messages about what you value.
There needs to be consistent reinforcement of the same culture and values from the start to the end of your employee’s career with you, and your CHRO should be able to demonstrate how they are driving this.
