How To Improve Interview Questions With Your Mission Statement

Your company’s mission statement is important to your business and your employees. It helps lay a pathway for you and your team in your day-to-day work as well as guidance for future work.  Your company looks towards its mission statement for guidance when making decisions.

When considering the great importance of your mission statement, it is key to make sure that any new hire you bring on board understands the company mission and culturally fits within the philosophy of your mission.

During the interview, consider incorporating your company’s mission statement into your interview questions in order to make sure that you have found a solid cultural fit.

Break down your mission statement.

If you want to first begin addressing the mission statement in the interview without actually giving away your company’s mission statement, you can break the statement down into a couple of different questions. Doing this will help you to ask thought provoking questions of the candidate and determine cultural fit.

For example, if your mission statement mentions “to provide exemplary customer service in equipment support with a sense of urgency,” you can ask a couple of questions surrounding this statement.

What does “exemplary customer service” mean to you?

What does it mean to you “to operate with a sense of urgency”?

These questions can help you to determine how a candidate’s philosophy aligns with your mission statement. Determining this can help to ensure you have a good cultural fit.

Simply ask the candidate about the mission statement.

Another way to incorporate your company’s mission statement into your interview questions is to simply ask the candidate about the statement.

Asking questions in the following format will help you not only understand the candidate’s understanding and personal take on your mission statement, but will also tell you if the candidate has done proper research on your company before the interview.

Have you reviewed our mission statement?

How does our mission statement align with your philosophy?

Pay attention to the candidate’s responses and do not accept anything less than carefully thought out answers. The candidate may not be able to immediately spit out a reply to the second question, but that’s ok. As long as the candidate does not take more than a few minutes to respond, this can show you that a lot of thought is being put into giving you an honest answer.

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