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Conducting effective interviews can be challenging, especially in charities, where interviewers may not be recruitment specialists. Juggling a high number of candidates adds further complexity and can make it difficult to keep a consistent track of responses.
Interview questions are crucial for assessing candidates’ skills, values and potential as a long-term fit for your team. Establishing the right set of questions to ask all candidates provides a repeatable basis for fairly assessing each applicant and identifying the right skill set.
Our guide provides a range of practical, structured questions across different themes to suit each vacancy and interview stage, including behavioural, cultural and charity-specific questions.
Why it’s important to plan interview questions ahead of time
Planning interview questions in advance is the foundation of a structured interview process. Structured interviews are beneficial for both the interviewers and candidates:
- Ensures consistency: The same questions are asked no matter who the interviewer is.
- Improves fairness and reduces bias: Candidate responses to specific questions can be easily compared rather than trying to compare answers to arbitrary questions.
- Supports better decision-making: Next steps can be decided objectively depending on the quality of responses.
- Covers key competencies: Candidates can be adequately questioned about essential skills and requirements.
You may even wish to share interview questions with candidates in advance, allowing them to prepare sufficiently and make a good first impression without nerves taking over.
The exact questions needed for each interview will depend on the role, but try to include a variety of question types where possible. Avoid inundating candidates with too many questions – around three to nine will suffice, depending on the vacancy’s complexity and seniority.
Standard interview questions
Every interview should have a standard set of foundational questions, designed to build rapport with candidates and establish a baseline of suitability. Standard questions are particularly useful for first-stage interviews to set context and break the ice, but aren’t necessary for second- and third-stage interviews.
Standard questions include:
- “Can you walk me through your experience and how it relates to this role?”
- “What attracted you to this position?”
- “What are your key strengths and how do you see them applying to this role?”
- “What type of working environment helps you perform at your best?”
After a few standard questions, interviewers can move on to more specific and challenging questions to delve deeper into candidates’ skills, experience and fit for the role.
Skills and knowledge assessment questions
During the interview stages, it’s important to assess candidate suitability for the role by testing key understanding and both essential and non-essential skills.
Interviews can use knowledge and skills-based questioning to assess a candidate’s potential to perform core responsibilities.
Skills-based questions include:
- “What key skills do you think are most important for this role, and how have you developed them previously?”
- “Can you describe your experience with [relevant tool/process]?”
- “How do you stay up to date with developments in your field?”
- “What would your approach be to [job-specific task]?”
Interviewers should be comfortable, and in fact encouraged, to probe candidates for further depth in their responses. If a shortlist of fantastic candidates emerges after the first stage, psychometric testing could be used in later interviews to delve deeper into suitability.
Strategic questions
Strategic-themed questions are designed to assess candidates’ approach to critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making processes.
Strategy questions include:
- “How would you approach solving [relevant role challenge]?”
- “Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with limited information.”
- “What would your priorities be in your first 90 days?”
- “How do you balance competing priorities?”
These types of questions are ideal when interviewing candidates for mid to senior-level roles. Entry-level positions that don’t require fast-paced action probably don’t need strategic questioning.
Culture fit questions
Questions around culture determine whether a candidate would be a good fit for the team. Someone could be perfectly qualified, but lack the passion necessary to drive your charity forward.
Culture questions include:
- “What motivates you to work in the charity sector?”
- “What type of team environment do you thrive in?”
- “How do you handle disagreements within a team?”
- “Can you describe how you support teammates in the workplace?”
- “What does a positive workplace culture look like to you?”
Purpose is key for any nonprofit, making it all the more important to assess candidates’ alignment with organisational values, mission and general team dynamics.
Behavioural questions
Past behaviour at work can indicate how a candidate may perform in the future. Behavioural questions assess a candidate’s response to certain situations and how they reflect on their experiences.
Behavioural questions include:
- “Tell me about a time you handled a difficult situation at work.”
- “Describe a time you had to adapt to change.”
- “Give an example of when you had to work under pressure.”
- “Tell me about a time you resolved a conflict.”
It’s important not to trick candidates into sharing a difficult story. Ideally, the question will be asked in a way that allows them to adopt the STAR method, explaining the situation through Situation, Task, Action and Results.
Charity role-specific questions
Charities face various challenges, from limited resources and budget to stakeholder complexity and skill gaps. However, the core mission keeps the team focused and motivated.
When interviewing for charity-specific roles, such as volunteers and fundraisers, you’ll need to assess how a candidate will respond to unique challenges. Even if candidates don’t have a background in the charity sector, many will be able to apply their experiences from other industries.
Charity role questions include:
- “How do you stay motivated when working with limited resources?”
- “Tell me about a time you engaged stakeholders or donors.”
- “How would you balance impact while handling budget constraints?”
- “What does success look like in a charity role?”
Questions to avoid asking
We’ve spoken a lot about what questions to ask, but it’s equally important to clarify what questions not to ask in an interview. Each interviewer has a responsibility not to ask questions that are leading or biased, overly personal or irrelevant, vague ‘culture fit’ questions, or designed to trick the candidate.
Questions not to ask include:
- “Do you have children?”
- “Would you fit in with our team?”
- “What animal would you be?
Other interview considerations
While the questions employers ask are important, several other factors come together to make an interview successful.
Fairness
Establishing fair interview processes helps mitigate the impact of unconscious bias, allowing the best talent to be onboarded.
It’s important that each interview is conducted in a consistent manner across all candidates. Candidates should be asked the same set of base questions, though it’s perfectly fine to ask follow-up questions, which may vary between individuals depending on their responses.
Structured scorecards can be used to objectively rate candidates against defined criteria. Scores can be supported by unbiased notes taken throughout the interview, which should be factual and focused on the candidate’s relevant skills and experience.
CharityJob’s ATS (Applicant Tracking System) includes an anonymous recruitment tool that allow recruiters to shortlist candidates based on their abilities and competencies for the role, such as by assigning candidates pseudonyms.
Second and third interview stages
A long recruitment process with seemingly endless rounds of interviews can be off-putting for candidates and create a poor experience.
Ideally, there should be no more than three interviews for a role. Avoid repeating the same questions at each stage, as this can waste time when the conversation should be progressing and building on previous answers and knowledge about the candidate.
- First interviews are broad, focusing on initial screening.
- Second interviews are longer and take a closer look at skills and scenarios. Candidates may be asked to prepare a presentation or complete an assessment.
- Third interviews are opportunities to assess cultural fit. Hiring managers should be fairly confident in the candidate and want to ensure they will be a good fit for the team.
Candidate experience
Interviews are a two-way conversation. While it’s important for organisations to assess candidates, the opposite is equally important. Moving into a new role is a big step, and candidates will want to feel sure they can see themselves fitting in and having a future in the team.
Create a good candidate experience so they get as much out of the interview as you do by prioritising clarity, respect and effective communication. During the interview, encourage candidates to ask questions and respond with honest answers. Between interview stages, recruiters should respond promptly so candidates know how they are progressing.
Manage your hiring process with CharityJob
Interviews are the main interactions hiring managers will have with candidates before hiring, so it’s important to get them right. CharityJob specialises in helping non-profits find the right people for every role, providing support at every stage.
Post a job, selecting the ‘Apply with CV and cover letter (CharityJob Apply)’ option, and get free access to our end-to-end Applicant Tracking System (ATS) tools designed to help with candidate management. Our ATS includes handy features, such as CV filtering, screening questions and bulk email response templates.
We offer four job ad packages to suit your needs and budget. Choosing the right package is important because it determines the pool size, type and quality of candidates your ad will reach.
If you’re not sure which is right for your non-profit organisation, contact us for personalised advice. Give us a call on 020 8939 8430, or email us at info@charityjob.co.uk
Tags: charity recruitment, charity sector recruitment, fairer recruitment, finding the right people, hiring the right people
