Interview Guide: Human Resources Professionals

In a knowledge-based economy with several generations in the workplace, exponential growth of social media and AI, niche job sites and job boards, remote work, and more — the role of the HR practitioner is constantly evolving. And in today's competitive job market, HR professionals play a crucial role in attracting and retaining top talent. But managing people can be tricky, it's important to find the right person to handle it.

The questions in this guide are designed to help you hire HR talent to support your organizational needs.

Interview Questions by Category

Initial Questions

1. Describe your HR experience beginning with your first role up to the present day.
2. Highlight which HR tasks you enjoyed in your previous role(s) and which you did not.
3. How would you like to see your HR career progress?
4. How does your academic background relate to HR? Do you have any certifications? More specifically, have you been responsible for: HR Strategy, Competency-Based Management, Recruitment/Resourcing, Classification/Job Descriptions, Organizational Development, Payroll, Compensation and Benefits, Learning and Development, Performance Management, Talent Management, Succession Planning, Occupational Health and Safety, Labour Relations, HRMS Design and Implementation, HR Metrics, Employment Equity, Pay Equity, Conflict Resolution, Legal HR (Human Rights, Employment Standards, etc.)
5. What HR Management Software or System (HRMS) have you worked with?
6. Do you have experience with Oracle (Fusion, PeopleSoft), SAP, Workday, JD Edwards, QuickBooks, etc.?
7. How was sensitive/confidential information managed in your past work environments? Were files stored physically or electronically?
8. Did you ever have to manage a breach of personnel information?
9. If an employee told you something that would have an impact on the organization’s reputation, and you were asked to keep it confidential, what would you do?
10. What is the largest and smallest HR group you’ve worked with? Name the benefits of each.
11. Within your past or current position, what role did you play to enhance the morale and culture of the organization?
12. Along the spectrum of people-oriented to process-oriented, where do you fall? Do you identify more with one than the other?
13. Would you consider yourself a big-picture thinker or more detail-oriented?

Recruitment and Selection

1. In previous roles, did you consult on strategies for recruitment?
2. What positions have you been responsible for staffing?
3. What are the key elements of a good job description?
4. Please describe your experience in developing job descriptions.
5. When you were responsible for staffing, how did you locate candidates?
   - Did you rely on applicants who applied directly?
   - Did you use online resume databases (Monster, Workopolis)?
   - Did you use business network sites or industry associations?
   - Did you recruit at colleges or universities?
   - Did you attend or host job fairs?
   - Did you post your jobs online, if so, where?
6. What is your experience recruiting summer students through internships or co-op programs?
7. When you were staffing a role, how many candidates would you seek to interview?
8. Did you conduct the interview alone, or as a committee?
9. Did you conduct remote interviews using Zoom, Teams, Google Meet or other video conferencing software? Please elaborate on your experience holding remote interviews.
10. When preparing for interviews, did you develop interview and/or reference questions? Provide an example.
11. What is your interview style: functional, behavioural, case scenarios – or a mix of all three?
12. What role did you play in the hiring decision? Did you make hiring recommendations?
13. What is the most challenging position for which you have recruited, and what steps did you take to locate and recruit the ideal candidate?
14. Tell me about a role that you were not able to fill. Go through some of the challenges and how you handled them. What was the end result?
15. How accurate do you believe references to be?
16. What insights have you gained in doing them?
17. Have you ever retracted a job offer due to a poor reference?
18. Did you have candidates do testing for any of the roles you filled? If so, which ones?
19. Did you design or develop the tests or did a manager design and score them?
20. Were you responsible for making the job offer verbally or in writing? If so, what type of questions did you address when making an offer of employment?
21. Have you ever experienced a situation where the candidate declined the position due to a counteroffer?
22. What was your organization’s policy about counteroffers? Did you negotiate or walk away?
23. Did your former organization hire both permanent and temporary employees? Did you manage the structure of the workforce in this regard?
24. Did you consider candidates that needed relocation services? If so, did you relocate anyone?
25. Did you consider candidates on a working Visa in Canada, and if so, were you able to retain them?
26. Did your organization take steps to encourage diverse hiring? Please explain.
27. Did you or your firm keep any recruitment statistics? Please describe.
28. What qualities do you believe make someone a strong recruiter? Which of those qualities do you have, and which ones are you still trying to develop?
29. How much of your business time would you like to be devoted to recruitment in your next role?

HR Administration/Assistant

1. Please describe your key duties and the areas of HR you supported in your previous roles.
2. Were you the first point of contact for the HR team?
3. Have you been responsible for employee scheduling?
4. In your past roles, did you contact candidates to schedule interviews, and/or to let them know they were not selected?
5. Were you responsible for entering data into your company’s HRIS?
6. Did you produce HR reports?
7. Did you suggest improvements or changes to the firm’s HRIS?
8. Did you update or prepare employee handbook or online guides/resources for employees?
9. Did you prepare letters of offer for employment, Confirmation of Employment, Letters of Termination, or other HR related documentation?
10. With respect to attendance management, were you responsible for entering vacation, sick leave or other time off in the system?
11. Were you part of the company’s Health and Safety Committee?
12. In the case of a workplace injury, were you responsible for completing forms or paperwork associated with the incident? 
13. Did you coordinate or track training?

HR Policy

1. Have you identified a need and contributed to the development of a new HR policy and/or practice? Please describe.
2. What HR policies have you developed, implemented, or revised: code of conduct, confidentiality, travel and expenses, education allowance, attendance and banked time, conflict of interests, leaves (bereavement, jury, sick), discipline, retirement, etc.?
3. In your previous role was the HR Manual, containing policies and procedures, stored online and searchable by managers? If not, how did managers access your organization’s policies?
4. Who contributed to and approved HR policies?
5. What steps did you take to communicate changes to a policy that was not well received, or adopted?

HR Strategy

1. How did HR align with the organization’s strategic plan?
2. How did HR operate in relation to other groups within the organization (Accounting, Production, Executive Management, Communications etc.)?
3. Did you encounter obstacles working with a specific group? If so, why? How did you iron them out?
4. Did your role include the strategic direction of compensation policy and practices?
5. In your role, were you involved in fostering effective working relationships with unions?
6. What were your primary objectives when establishing hiring needs? Did these vary across different departments? Please explain.
7. What elements of employment legislation came into play most often in your role? Did you work with employment lawyers or advisors?
8. What steps did you take to enhance the decision-making process within the organization? How did this impact the company’s HR strategy?
9. Did you seek employee feedback? If so, how did it contribute to the development of HR policies or strategies?
10. Did you consider your organization’s HR strategy fair and consistent? Please explain.
11. In your opinion, how is change management part of implementing a new structure or workflow?
12. How could your role and experience in HR positively impact our organization?

Employee Relations

1. In your last role, was employee relations a function of HR or was it the responsibility of the group manager?
2. What was your role in managing the relationship between the employee and employer?
3. What topics resurfaced frequently from both sides?
4. How did you facilitate communication between these groups?
5. Tell me about an employee relations issue you dealt with that required disciplinary action. Discuss the steps you took to resolve the issue.
6. Did your organization conduct workplace surveys? If so, how was the information used?
7. What is one element of your employee relations program that you consistently championed?
8. Were there any elements that you disagreed with? Please explain.
9. Did you have formal employee recognition programs in place? If so, please explain.
10. Did you lead or coordinate these programs?
11. CASE SCENARIO: If you hired a new worker whose motivation waned quickly on the job, what steps would you take to address the matter?
12. How were employee complaints addressed?
13. Did your organization have a formal violence and harassment policy? If so, who governed it?
14. How was the policy communicated?
15. How did you assess and manage risks of workplace violence?
16. How many incident reports did you oversee? 
17. Please explain how your role contributed to increasing productivity.
18. In your role, were you part of new hire orientation (onboarding)? If so, please explain your approach.
19. Who was responsible for ergonomics and work space management?
20. Did you address any ergonomic issues in your workplace? If so, what steps did you take?
21. Do you have experience addressing accommodation requests and overseeing their implementation (duty to accommodate disabilities, family status, religious needs, etc.)?
22. If morale seemed low to you, what steps would you take to contribute to a more positive atmosphere? Please use examples from your past roles if possible.
23. CASE SCENARIO: Your most highly productive employee has been exhibiting behaviour in the workplace that has become toxic to morale. What approach would you take to solve the problem?
24. Were you responsible for writing your company’s employee relations policy? If so, did you oversee its implementation?
25. Did you document and follow performance management issues? If so, explain how you partnered with management to improve the performance of low performers.
26. Do you have experience managing long-term absences?
27. Did you work with collective bargaining and trade unions?
28. Were you involved in grievances or arbitrations?
29. Did you conduct investigations related to employee issues?

Learning and Development

1. Describe your organization’s training and development program for each business unit. Were you involved in the design or expansion of it?
2. How were training needs identified?
3. Did you consult with managers?
4. Did annual performance appraisals offer insights into training requirements?
5. Did your role include job analysis?
6. What was your involvement in onboarding new employees?
7. Did you develop an onboarding plan for new hires?
8. On your team, who was responsible for delivering training?
9. Did you develop training materials for in-house courses?
10. Do you have experience managing a training budget, and if so, what size of budget?
11. On which topics did you train and how did you ensure that the information was retained following the training session?
12. What training tools did you employ: classroom-style learning, one-on-one discussion, video training, e-learning, hands-on learning, written documentation, and/or coaching?
13. What is your perspective on the statement: “Adults retain 30% of what they hear once?”
14. What do you think the difference is between employee training and employee learning?
15. How do you think learning can be measured?
16. What have you observed about training adult learners successfully?
17. How did you ensure that the learning experience was good enough to allow for knowledge transfer and retention to occur?
18. Did you administer questionnaires following training sessions?
19. How have you obtained feedback on the effectiveness of your organization’s training programs?
20. What have you done with this feedback to improve participant learning?
21. Outline the steps of your employee development plan.
22. Did your organization offer mostly in-house training, or did you send employees to external training courses? If external, which ones did you find successful?
23. Did you foster cross-training within the organization? If so, what challenges did you experience?
24. How did you manage employees who wanted career progression when no advancement opportunities were possible?
25. When an employee was retiring or taking parental leave, how did you tackle knowledge transfer when they left? And in the case of parental leave, upon their return?
26. What methods were used to track training year-over-year within the organization?
27. What e-learning techniques did you implement?
28. Learning trends show that the human attention span is decreasing as a result of technology and the rapid demand for information. This has led to a rise in “micro-learning,” short spurts of teaching on the employee’s own schedule. What have you observed in the context of attention spans in adult learning? What steps would you take to enhance micro-learning?

Compensation and Benefits

1. What was your role in maintaining your organization’s compensation system?
2. What research did you undertake to establish salaries or pay grades?
3. How often do you think it's appropriate to benchmark compensation activities?
4. Tell me about a suggestion you made that was implemented in a previous employer’s compensation and benefits system or process.
5. In your past role, was a formal performance evaluation system part of the compensation review?
6. Have you been responsible for developing promotion strategies or retention strategies tied to a compensation program?
7. Do you have experience with base salaries, bonus pay systems, commission structures, and other incentives?
8. How were pay increases addressed in your last role (i.e. inflation, company or employee performance, etc.)?
9. To what degree have you been involved with employee benefits?
10. Did you interact with your organization's insurer to reduce rates, or to get advice about an insurance question?
11. What benefit package did you manage and what was your involvement in the daily details of benefit management? For example, when an employee’s salary went up, was it your responsibility to adjust it in the benefits profile to ensure the employee’s life insurance was accurately reflected?
12. Did your firm offer indirect benefits such as compressed time, part-time or remote work options?
13. How did human rights or health and safety surface within your role as Compensation Manager?

Health and Safety

1. Describe the health and safety training that you delivered to employees. How did you track that the training had occurred?
2. What is the most common health and safety issue that came up in your previous role and what actions did you take to reduce its occurrence?
3. What was the most common injury?
4. How many of the injuries or accidents you investigated were preventable?
5. In your experience, what is the most effective way to communicate safety measures to employees so that they remember them?
6. How have you handled issues of sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace?
7. Did your firm ever face threats of violence, or actual violence, against an employee? If so, how was the problem addressed
8. What was your role in the investigation, documentation and resolution of harassment or violence?
9. How would you respond to a manager who thought safety procedures were a waste of time?
10. What would you do if a manager asked you to ignore a safety violation?
11. After six months in this role, what kind of health and safety routine would you have in place?
12. What steps did the HR department take to prevent drinking and driving after workplace celebrations or work parties that included alcohol?
13. Did you manage back-to-work programs for employees who were off work due to injury?
14. What was the longest period of time an employee was on leave due an to injury?
15. What would you do if you suspected an employee was not injured, however, was off work due to an injury they stated occurred at work?

Labour Relations

1. Have you worked in labour relations, and with collective agreements? How many employees were part of the bargaining unit?
2. Did you investigate and evaluate complaints or concerns raised from the union?
3. Did you monitor workforce adherence to labour agreements?
4. Did you communicate with union representatives? If so, were they national or local representatives?
5. What were the key subjects of your communication?
6. Do you have experience dealing with issues around poor performers, dismissals, duty to accommodate, overtime, suspensions, layoffs and/or grievances?
7. In your role, did you conduct research into wage data, economic data, employment law, human rights legislation, provincial or territorial legislation, or others?
8. Explain the grievance procedure.
9. Did you schedule grievance hearings?
10. Did you negotiate settlements to avoid formal hearings?
11. Did you experience a strike or lockout during your employment? What was your role when this took place?
12. In your relationship with managers, what were some of the challenges you faced when supporting them from a labour relations perspective?
13. What was your role in managing the relationship between the employee and employer? What topic resurfaced frequently from both sides?
14. Tell me about a labour relations issue you dealt with that required disciplinary action. Discuss the steps you took to assist in resolving the issue.
15. Have you ever been involved in negotiating collective bargaining agreements? If so, what was your level of involvement?
    Would you say that a positive employee/union relationship is a good investment which leads to cost savings?

Employment Standards

1. What is the minimum wage in our province or territory?
2. How have increases in minimum wage had an impact on your organization?
3. As an employer wishing to terminate an employee, what steps should you take to avoid wrongful termination?
4. Did you take part in terminations, and if so, what was your role? Did you have employees sign a Release Agreement?
5. What can an employer deduct from an employee’s pay?
6. Have you ever implemented a dress code? If so, please explain how you communicated this.
7. Are you familiar with the correlation between human rights and dress code?
8. What elements of Employment Standards have you had significant experience with:
   - Hours of work and overtime
   - Leaves of absence
   - Sick leave
   - Notice of termination
   - Breaks
   - Minimum hours of work
   - Uniforms
   - Deductions
   - Termination of employment
   - Hiring
   - Harassment
9. Have you had to attend meetings with an ESA officer regarding an ESA complaint made by an employee? If so, what subject and what was the outcome?
10. CASE SCENARIO: After considerable performance management, it’s determined that a 50-year-old employee with 6 years of service will be terminated. What are the minimum provisions under ESA for notice of termination and severance? What would you recommend to the employer?

‍