Recruitment Interview Questions, and What They're Really Testing
A quick clarification first, because this phrase means two things. This page is about the questions you get asked when you are interviewing for a job in recruitment. If you are looking for what a recruiter will ask you about some other job, how to prepare for assessment centres is the more useful page.
A recruitment interview is also slightly unusual, in that the person opposite you interviews people for a living and will notice a rehearsed answer faster than most. Preparing what you actually think is more use than preparing what you plan to say.
"Why recruitment?"
Testing whether you understand what the job is. The answer that fails is "I like working with people", partly because everyone says it and mostly because it describes a much gentler job than this one.
The answer that works usually acknowledges the sales element without flinching from it, because an agency wants to know you have understood that part rather than hoping it will not come up. What a career in recruitment is actually like covers the ordinary version worth referring to.
"Sell me this pen"
Or a variation of it. Testing whether you ask questions before pitching, which most people do not. The weak version is an enthusiastic description of the pen. The strong version starts by asking what they write, how often, and what is wrong with what they use now.
They are not looking for slickness. They are checking whether your instinct under pressure is to talk or to find out.
"How do you handle rejection?"
The most important question in the interview, because rejection at volume is the thing that ends most recruitment careers. They want a real example and an honest account of what it cost you.
"It does not bother me" is the answer that goes down worst, because it is either untrue or suggests you have not experienced it yet. Describing something that genuinely stung, and what you did the next morning, is far stronger.
"Tell me about a time you were competitive"
Testing whether a visible scoreboard will motivate you or corrode you, since most agency floors have one. Sport comes up often here and is fine, but the more useful answer is about work or something with a real stake.
Worth being honest rather than performing this one. If competition genuinely drains you, an agency floor is a difficult place to spend three years, and finding that out in the interview is better than finding out in month four.
"A candidate accepts a counter-offer the week before starting. What do you do?"
Testing judgement and honesty at the same time, and it is the most revealing question they ask. There is a version of the answer that is pure pressure, and a version that is pure sympathy, and neither is right.
The strong answer finds out why they are wavering, tests whether the counter-offer solves the thing that made them look in the first place, and is straight with them even where that might cost the placement. Interviewers are listening for whether you would be honest with someone when it is expensive to be.
"How would you win a new client?"
Testing whether you understand that business development is part of the job, and whether you would do the preparation. "I would ring lots of companies" is a worse answer than one specific approach to one type of business, with a reason attached.
You are not expected to know their market. You are expected to have thought about it for more than a minute.
"What do you know about the sectors we recruit into?"
Testing commercial awareness and basic diligence. One specific observation about their market beats a general statement about recruitment. What commercial awareness actually means is the underlying skill.
The exercise
Many recruitment interviews include a task: a mock candidate call, a role-play with the interviewer as a difficult client, occasionally being handed a job spec and asked how you would approach it. Some agencies will put you on a phone during the process, which is not a trick, it is the job.
Ask questions before proposing anything, say what you would want to know, and do not rush to a confident answer you cannot support. How to prepare for assessment centres covers the format more broadly.
The thing preparation cannot fix
You can prepare for every question above and still not know whether the job suits you, because an interview tests how you describe yourself rather than how you actually work when a week is going badly. Those are different things, and recruitment is a field where the gap between them shows up fast.
If the underlying skills are what you want to work on, the skills a recruitment career actually asks for is the place to start. And if you are not yet certain recruitment is the direction, see what the work is really like first.