There are different ways of interviewing somebody. The whole point of an interview is to gain insights into one’s way of thinking, competency, compatibility and sense of responsibility. Depending on his/her facial gestures, one can guess how social and how thoughtful somebody is. Let’s say, for example, one has wrinkles on the forehead, this suggests he/she is a good listener and is socially active. Similarly, a vertical wrinkle between the eyebrows suggests that he/she is a critical thinker, and so on. There is a whole branch of study of body language to study this in detail. Similarly, depending on how he/she answers a question, one can understand the sense of responsibility and the degree of truthfulness that he/she has in his/her words.

In one interview, Elon Musk was asked what would be the one interview question he would ask the potential hire. He stopped, reflected and then replied: “Tell me the story of your life. And tell me the decisions you made along the way and why you made them.” The beauty of this question is that if the interviewee answers by assigning the responsibility or cause of the problem to third parties and refers to third parties a lot while answering, this means the person is not so responsible for his own actions, and also potentially not telling the truth. While telling the truth, people assign themselves as the main character and can recall the details of the process like: I did this to solve it, it was my fault, and so on.

What would be the one question you would ask a potential new hire?