How To Ask Better Follow-Up Questions In Structured Interviews

A common concern about structured interviewing is that by asking pre-planned questions, interviewers will miss opportunities to delve deeper into candidates' answers. But by mastering the art of the follow-up, interviewers can get both the benefits of structure, e.g fairer and more effective interviews, whilst gathering all the information they need to make the best hiring decisions. Let's explore how follow-up questions sharpen your evaluation and enhance the overall interview process.

1. Understanding the Importance of Follow-Up Questions

1.1 Why Follow-Up Questions Matter

Follow-up questions are crucial during interviews because they transform a more superficial conversation into a meaningful dialogue. When you ask these questions, you're pushing past the rehearsed responses candidates often come prepared with, and uncovering genuine insights about their skills, motivations, and fit for your company.

This technique can also help distinguish between a candidate who has practical experience and one who only knows the theory. By routinely asking insightful follow ups, you can run an interview process that digs below the surface and gets to the crux of what you need to know.

1.2 How Follow-Up Questions Improve Candidate Evaluation

Enhancing candidate evaluation with follow-up questions ensures you're not solely relying on the candidate's CV or initial responses as a measure of their potential. Whilst candidates may initially be nervous during a first round of questions, thoughtful follow-ups can encourage them to relax and talk about their own experiences, allowing them to portray their true capabilities.

Moreover, follow-up questions can allow you to resolve any ambiguities that arise during the interview, meaning that you can make your final decision more quickly and confidently. The knock on effect of this is running a shorter interview process overall, which allows you to move quickly and snap up in demand candidates.

2. Techniques for Crafting Better Follow-Up Questions

2.1 Use Scenario-Based Follow-Ups to Uncover Real Insight

To craft better follow-up questions, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel - just build on what the candidate shares. Below are two commonly used question types - behavioural and situational - with suggested follow-up questions that interviewers can use to gain depth and clarity.

Behavioural Example

Main question:
'Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult customer.'

Follow-up questions:

Situation

• What led up to that situation?

• Was it preventable in any way?

• What did you identify as the core issue?

Action

• What did you do first?

• How did you decide on your course of action?

• Were there other options you considered?

Outcome

• What happened as a result?

• Is there anything you would do differently now?

• Did anything positive come from that experience?

These follow-ups help assess conflict resolution, emotional regulation, and decision-making under pressure - all key competencies in people-facing roles.

Situational Example

Main question:
'Imagine a difficult customer asks why they haven't received the product they wanted and are demanding a refund. How would you approach this?”

Follow-up questions:

Situation

• Why do you think this issue occurred?

• What would you prioritise in resolving this?

• Are there other concerns you'd need to keep in mind?

Action

• What exactly would you say to the customer?

• What steps would you take to investigate or resolve it?

• What else could you do if your first action didn’t work?

Outcome

• How would you expect the customer to respond?

• What would you do if they remained upset?

• What would a successful outcome look like to you?

These questions uncover the candidate’s empathy, communication skills, and ability to stay composed in difficult situations.

2.2 Use Clarifying and Reflective Prompts

Beyond scenario-specific probes, interviewers can also use general follow-up types that apply across many questions, for example:

• Clarification: Can you walk me through that step again?

• Reflection: Looking back, would you do anything differently?

• Challenge: What was the hardest part of that situation?

• Depth: What were the short-term and long-term results?

2.3 Listening Skills: The Key to Insightful Follow-Up Questions

Effective listening skills form the backbone of conducting insightful interviews. By keenly listening to candidate responses, you can craft follow-up questions that explore aspects not initially addressed, clarifying any ambiguities or unexpected insights.

Transform active listening into a tool for steering the conversation:

• Feedback Loop: Paraphrase the candidate's answers to ensure accurate understanding.

• Clarification: Politely probe with questions like 'Could you elaborate on…?'

• Observational Queries: Use observations ('I noticed you mentioned…') to explore deeper.

Tip: Utilise silence effectively. After asking a follow-up question, allow a brief pause. This gives candidates the space to think and often leads them to provide more detailed responses.

3. Using Technology to Implement Better Follow-Up Questions

3.1 Creating a Framework

Creating a robust framework for follow-up questions can significantly enhance the effectiveness of structured interviews. Evidenced helps hiring teams achieve this by allowing them to upload existing interview documents and automatically create structured interview templates which can be shared company wide.

Evidenced also provides the necessary tools to train your interview teams, and by offering both interviewing shadowing and structured question templates, it supports interviewers in staying focused on relevant follow-up questions.

3.2 Employing Real-Time Guidance

Real-time guidance in interviews can dramatically uplift interviewer performance by ensuring that questions lead to meaningful follow-ups. Evidenced facilitates this by providing live question prompting, so interviewers can be confident that they've asked the right questions every time, giving them more flexibility to ask thoughtful follow-ups.

Moreover, Evidenced's interview insights helps to maintain interview quality by alerting managers when interviews do not meet expectations and a candidate is not happy with the quality of questioning. This results in quick corrective measures and targeted training, enhancing the overall reliability of the interview process.

Ultimately, structured interviews don't have to mean rigid conversations. By mastering the art of follow-up questions, you can transform standardised interviews into meaningful dialogues that reveal a candidate’s true potential. And by using tools like Evidenced, you can make it easy to train interviewers, provide real-time support, and ensure consistency without sacrificing depth.