I agree with bartonfink's questions. The exact questions to ask depend largely on the role for which you are interviewing, as well as the interviewee's backgrou

I agree with bartonfink's questions. The exact questions to ask depend largely on the role for which you are interviewing, as well as the interviewee's background. The best questions tend to be open-ended, behavioral, and relevant. Open-ended meaning they shouldn't end with a Yes or No answer. They should lead to a longer discussion that allows you to ask follow-on questions, probe deeper into their thinking, and arrive to the core influencers of their past decisions. Behavioral questions assume that past performance is the best predictor of future performance. Therefore, ask them about previous situations and how they specifically dealt with them. There's less chance a candidate will answer with a generic & good-sounding answer this way. Relevance goes back to bartonfink's questions. Asking a programmer about his favorite accounting methods is as good as asking a chef whether he prefers Ruby or Python. But in case you're just looking for general, all-purpose questions, here are three of my favorites: * How do you personally define and measure success? * What are you doing to improve yourself, physically, mentally, or spiritually? * In what kind of work environment do you do your best work? In case it helps, I have seven more in a blog post (don't mean to be spammy or SEO slimy; nofollows takes care of that): http://bizthoughts.mikelee.org/ten-great-interview-questions.html http://bizthoughts.mikelee.org/ten-great-interview-questions...