Decision-making skills are important because they save time, they prevent conflict and they increase productivity. Many positions, especially managerial roles, require excellent decision-making. Recruiters seek to ask interview questions to assess a candidate’s decision-making expertise for almost every job, but especially in jobs that involve leading and managing. You need to focus your questions on the candidate's behavior and how they have performed in the past in situations similar to what they will encounter in your workplace.

Decision-making questions in a job interview often focus on individual behaviors and how the applicant reacted to having to make decisions in the past. The answers to these questions prove to employers whether or not a candidate can handle decision-making in the workplace and if he/she has a history of doing it well.

Top 11 Decision-making Questions To Ask in a Job Interview

1.Describe the process you typically follow to make a decision about a plan of action.

2.Offer an example of a decision you made

3.Think about a time when you had several options from which to choose, but none of them were sufficient to meet your goal. How did you decide which option to follow?

4.How would you handle a demanding external stakeholder who keeps changing the requirements for the project that you are working on?

5.Describe the process you followed to pick the college you attended.

6.Do you have a process or a methodology that you typically use when you are making decisions?

7.If you had the opportunity to select a new employee, what criteria would you use to determine who to hire? What's important to you in making this decision?

8.Faced with a choice between qualified candidates for a promotion, a lateral move, a project leader, or a new hire, describe how you made your choice.

9.Do you make better decisions on your own or in a group? Why is that? When do you ask for help?

10.You are working on a group project. In this situation, do you make most of the decisions, or do you prefer to let someone else take the lead and follow their instructions?

11.How do you plan to reach your professional goals?

Why Do Recruiters Value Decision-Making Skills?

Recruiters value decision making because it is a skill that is required in many different situations across many business areas, from everyday tasks to more complex projects or unforeseen situations.

The more important decision making is as a skill for the job you have applied for, the more emphasis it will be given by the employer during the application process. The technique that employers use to assess decision-making skills will vary depending on the activities and tests that they provide, but the majority of them will be time-based, and candidates will be expected to explain the reasoning they used to reach their decision.

4 Ways To Assess the Decision-making Skills of a Candidate

Here are a few ways how you can assess the decision-making skills of a candidate in an interview:

• Give a hypothetical scenario to the candidate wherein they are expected to make an important decision. Use realistic examples to test their decision-making skills in situations that they could also encounter in their job.
• Skilled employees who make a decision after a thorough analysis of the advantages and disadvantages should be able to present and explain their choice. Look for self-confident applicants who stick by their decisions.
• We don’t have unlimited time to solve most of the problems we encounter at work. The best decision-makers will strike a balance between a good decision and a quick one.
• Ask applicants about examples and situations where they made effective decisions at work in order to find out how they tackled problems in their last job. Team players are more likely to take input and advice from other colleagues on board.