Strategic Thinking :
Don’t rely on your job applicant to tell you whether they are strategic. Instead, use one of these six interview approaches.
- Give Them a Real Problem to Solve.
What you should look for in a response will vary according to the particular problem you’ve asked them to solve, but there are essential steps that should be included in every answer.
compile a list of potential problems
check the strategic plan
review company and industry multiyear forecasts
identify and track key industry and economic environmental factors
identify and consult with key stakeholders across departments and business units
Depending on the question, you may also look for these steps in their answer.
identify interconnected and interdependent functional areas, including predictive metrics
pretest solutions with your customers
measure success after implementation and use data to make adjustments
- Ask Them to Review a Flawed Strategic Plan and Identify Potential Problems.
- Ask Specific Interview Questions.
There are several questions that can reveal whether a candidate has strategic thinking skills.
How would you go about connecting the dots and identifying the interrelationships and interdependencies in a proposed strategic plan?
When you are working on a strategic project in your current job, how do you go about identifying the relevant stakeholders across the firm?
What are the steps that you have taken during your career to become a more strategic thinker? What measures or indicators do you have for growing the skill?
What are the steps you’d take to identify which candidates for a job are strategic thinkers? (The answer here is helpful in two ways. It will give you ideas to improve your assessment, and it will provide insight into the candidate’s depth of understanding on the topic and how they describe themselves against that criteria.)
- Look for Strategic Phrases Within the Answers to Your Standard Interview Questions.
- Ask Questions That Reveal How Much They Value Strategic Thinking.
- Consider the Questions They Ask You.
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