Best interview questions for a Recruiter

Recruiter interview questions

Recruiters are responsible for acquiring new employees for a company. Through the use of the right online and offline channels, they connect and engage with both active and passive candidates for certain positions.

You should look out for these skills during your search for the right Recruiter:

Impeccable people skills and the ability to easily build relationships
Strong communication skills, both verbal and written
Excellent time management skills
Skilled at working under pressure at a fast pace and towards tight deadlines and ambitious targets

Interviewing a Recruiter

You are searching for an excellent Recruiter? Then you will soon have to start interviewing for a recruiter position to get to know your candidate a little better. But what questions should you ask to hire the one who normally does the hiring for you? With our Recruiter interview questions, your interview is prepared quickly and easily!

Please note:
Our interview questions are suggestions for the earlier stages of the interview process and for candidates with average work experience. They are therefore a little more general.

How to open the job interview

The first half of your recruiter interview should focus on easing the candidate’s nerves because nervousness is common with even the most seasoned candidates. If the candidate feels at ease with you, you’ll learn a lot more about them and get a better idea of who they are as a person.

Asking engaging, role-related questions that are open-ended and incite a conversation will help you achieve this.

Job Description available

See our example Recruiter job description here

For the interview

A positive opener to start

What has been your journey so far?

What do you love the most about being a Recruiter?

What would you say is the best part of your job?

Behavioral Questions

Can you describe a normal day at your previous Recruiter job?
- This tells you a bit more about their specific way of working and whether they might fit in with the rest of your HR team
Tell me about a time when a candidate asked for a higher salary than your budget allowed. What did you do?
- A Recruiter has to be able to negotiate with candidates when it comes to salaries and contract agreements, but sometimes it also means negotiating with internal stakeholders as well. See how the candidate handles such a situation.
Tell me about a time you and the internal Hiring Manager didn’t align on candidate expectations. What did you do?
- Internal Hiring Managers sometimes have far too high demands and expectations of a candidate, hoping to find a candidate with senior skills for a junior salary. Find out how the Recruiter candidate goes about explaining this and setting the right expectations.

Soft Skills

How do you build rapport with new applicants, even if they behave rudely or unfriendly towards you?
- Find out how the candidate builds relationships, even when the other person isn’t initially open to it. As a Recruiter, the candidate will often face such a situation. This question helps identify their people skills.
How do you ensure an applicant feels comfortable and at ease during an interview?
- An important part of the Recruiter’s job is to not only build rapport with the applicants. It’s also to make them feel comfortable, so the Recruiter gets the best possible answers out of them to best assess whether they fit the role.
How much experience do you have with working cross-functionally with different departments across an organisation?
- The candidate should be able to work with many stakeholders from different departments.

Hard Skills

What job boards have you used in the past, and which would you say provide the best ROI?
- A top Recruiter knows exactly which job board to post a job to for what position or niche.
What would you say are the most important recruitment KPIs to track and measure?
- Great examples here would be time to hire, cost per hire, offer acceptance rate, and candidate conversion rate.
Which Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) do you have experience with?
- The use of an ATS is standard practice for a Recruiter. This interview question gives you an idea of which tools they have experience with and how long it might take to onboard your new Recruiter. Bonus points if they say they’ve used JOIN before 😉

Operational / Situational Questions

Imagine you receive hundreds of applications but quickly find out none of them actually fit the role you are sourcing for. How would you proceed?
- This can be due to a variety of reasons. Perhaps the job description is clear enough, or perhaps the job ad is posted across the wrong job boards for the role.
Imagine a candidate is 20 minutes late to an interview. What do you do?
- You want your new Recruiter to be empathetic and considerate, but also not too lenient. Furthermore, if it’s the only candidate for an extremely difficult-to-fill position, perhaps it’s in the company’s best interest to let the candidate off. Find out how they proceed in such a situation.
Imagine you are tasked with finding a new Software Engineer, and they can be based anywhere in the world. How would you proceed?
- Global recruitment is becoming increasingly important, with the current labour shortage on the market and the constantly improving options for remote work.