7 Interview Questions That Identify Top Performers (and 1 Bonus)

Google invented the brain-teaser interview question. Then Google ran the data and found those questions had zero predictive value for job success. “Why are manhole covers round?” or “How many birdhouses are there in San Francisco?” sound clever, but Don Georgevich is blunt: “they mean absolutely nothing.”

The replacement isn’t more clever questions. It’s predictive questions: ones designed to surface specific patterns of behavior that correlate with on-the-job success. Georgevich’s set of seven (eight, really) does this by mapping the candidate’s history against motivation patterns, ownership behavior, and growth signals.

What follows is each question, what it’s actually testing for, and how to score the answers consistently across an interview panel. Pair this with The perfect screening call script for structure, and Hiring for cultural fit for how to combine these answers into an evidence-based wash-up.

Why Most Interviews Fail to Predict Success

In short: Georgevich’s diagnosis is that hiring managers ask questions without knowing what they’re looking for in the answers. When you don’t know the signal you’re scoring, the candidate controls the interview, and you end up hiring whoever made you feel comfortable instead of whoever is likely to succeed in the role.

The framing is sharp:

“If you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for from each question that you ask, you’re essentially giving control of the interview to the candidate. And when this happens, you’re likely to end up hiring someone who makes you feel good inside, makes you feel comfortable, makes you feel like they’re going to be able to do a good job — instead of hiring someone who is likely to be successful in the role.”

The fix is predictive questioning. Each question is designed to surface a specific, scoreable signal. Not “did they answer well” but “did they show the pattern that distinguishes A-players from C-players in this dimension.”

The seven questions below each test a different dimension. Used together, they produce a behavioral picture that’s hard to fake, because the answers reveal patterns across the candidate’s full work history, not just their preparation for one interview.

Question 1: “What Led You to Join ABC Company?”

In short: Georgevich’s first question maps the candidate’s motivation pattern across every job they’ve held. A-players accept new positions for growth and challenge. C-players accept them for money. The pattern across multiple roles is more predictive than any single answer.

Ask this question for the company they’re at now and for previous companies on their resume. The structure: “What led you to join ABC Company?”

What you’re listening for: why did they accept that role? Money? Opportunity? Growth? Travel? Title?

The pattern matters more than any single answer. Georgevich’s rule:

• C-player pattern: “Money, money, money, money, money. Then you’re probably dealing with a C-player. Just discard them now.”
• A-player pattern: each move was for “continued growth and challenge each time. Then you’re likely dealing with an A-player.”

The bottom-line test: “Is it possible for them to realize their goals by working for you?” If the candidate’s motivation pattern is money-driven and your role pays at market instead of above, they’re likely to leave within 6-12 months when a higher offer arrives. The relationship won’t last.

The recruiter-side application: this isn’t a moralistic test. People can value money and still be excellent. The question is whether the offer you’re going to make matches what motivates them. If you can’t deliver on what they want, save both sides the time.

Question 2: “What Led to Your Decision to Leave Your Job?”

In short: The wording matters. “Why did you leave” is closed and defensive. “What led to your decision to leave” opens the door to a fuller answer. Across the work history, you’re looking for a pattern of terminations, layoffs, or running away from problems, with the assumption that whatever pattern you see will continue if you hire them.

The phrasing: “What led to your decision to leave your job?” Not “Why did you leave.”

The phrasing change is deliberate. “What led to your decision” frames the candidate as the agent making the choice, which produces a fuller, more candid answer. “Why did you leave” sounds like an accusation and gets you a defensive non-answer.

What you’re listening for:

• Did they leave because they failed in the role?
• Were they fired?
• Were they unhappy, and if so, with what specifically?
• Were they pursuing a real opportunity, or running from a bad situation?

The pattern read across the full work history: “If their work history shows a pattern of terminations, layoffs, and firings, then you can assume that that pattern is going to continue if you hired them too.”

A single firing is not a red flag. A pattern of three roles ending in dismissal or sudden exit is the same pattern likely to repeat in your company. The question is whether the candidate has insight into why the pattern keeps showing up. A-players will often own it explicitly. C-players will blame the previous employer every time.

Question 3: “What Were You Hired to Do?”

In short: This question is the ownership test. A-players take responsibility for outcomes, including failures. C-players blame the company, the team, the resources, or the funding. The single most predictive C-player tell, per Georgevich: citing external reasons for not accomplishing what they were hired to do.

The structure of the question is simple, but the diagnostic is sharp.

What you’re listening for:

• Were they hired to take over a failing project? Build a sales territory? Lead a team? Close a major deal?
• Did they accomplish what they were hired to do?
• If not, what’s their explanation?

Georgevich’s diagnostic for the explanation:

“If they didn’t accomplish what they were hired to do, and they cite reasons like ‘well, there was poor management,’ ‘lack of funding,’ ‘I didn’t have the right teams,’ ‘I didn’t have enough resources’ — you can assume right there you’re dealing with a C-player. Because A-players take total responsibility. If they failed at something, they will own it. They’ll say, ‘It was my fault. I didn’t get it done. I wasn’t able to do the job.’ And they won’t blame the company. They won’t blame the team. They won’t blame anything but themselves.”

The recruiter caveat: “blame nothing but themselves” is a strong rule. Real organizations have real constraints, and an A-player can correctly point to specific structural problems. The signal isn’t whether they mention any external factor; it’s whether they own their part first, or whether the entire explanation is external. Listen for “I should have” and “I could have” before “the company didn’t.”

Question 4: “What Were Your Biggest Accomplishments, and How Did You Achieve Them?”

In short: A-players have specific, scaled accomplishments they can describe in detail. C-players describe daily duties dressed up as accomplishments. Georgevich’s test: did the answer leave you with a “wow factor”? If not, you’re listening to job description recitation.

The wording matters: “What were your biggest accomplishments in your last job, and how did you achieve those?”

The “how” half forces specificity. Anyone can claim a result. Walking through how it was achieved (the steps, the obstacles, the trade-offs) is much harder to fabricate.

Georgevich’s filter:

“Don’t let candidates off the hook without giving you all the details. You want to understand if they’re simply describing their daily duties, or if these are real accomplishments. If their accomplishments lack grit and fail to leave you with a wow factor, you are dealing with a C-player. Let them go now.”

What “wow factor” looks like in practice:

• A revenue or efficiency outcome with a specific number instead of a vague “improved sales.”
• A description of obstacles overcome, not just outcomes claimed.
• The candidate as the actor, not the passenger. “I led the project” with concrete actions, not “we did.”
• A scale appropriate to the seniority of the role.

The PAL methodology from Hiring for cultural fit (Problem, Action, Learning, with a long funnel at the top) is the right structure for probing this question. The first answer is rehearsed. The follow-ups are where the real signal lives.

Question 5: “What Impact Have You Made on the Company?”

In short: This is question 4 from a different angle. Question 4 tests project-level achievements. Question 5 tests company-level impact. The question is: did they move the needle? If they haven’t done it before, they’re unlikely to do it for you.

The framing: “What impact have you made on the company while working in that position?”

The shift from question 4 is from project to company. Question 4 asks “what did you do?” Question 5 asks “what changed because you were there?”

What you’re listening for:

• Did the company outcome (revenue, efficiency, customer outcomes, team performance) measurably change because of this person?
• Did they grow others? Build something that outlasted them? Set up a system that’s still in use?
• Or did the company carry on essentially the same way it would have without them?

Georgevich’s framing: “Chances are that if you’re interviewing somebody, you are looking for high performers, game-changers who are going to come in and have a significant impact on your business or your team or a project or a sales territory. The surest way is to find out how someone has done it before. If they haven’t done it before, they’re probably not going to be able to do it for you either.”

The rule: past impact is the best predictor of future impact. Not the only predictor, but the best one. If a candidate’s last three roles produced no measurable company-level change, the prior probability that they’ll produce one for you is low.

Question 6: “What Were You Most Passionate About, and What Did You Enjoy the Least?”

In short: A compound question that tests for alignment. You want at least 90% of the new role to overlap with what the candidate loved doing in their last role. If 10-20% of the new role is what they explicitly disliked before, they’ll either leave fast or, worse, stay and underperform for a paycheck.

The structure: “What were you most passionate about at ABC Company, and what did you enjoy the least?”

This is two questions in one, and they’re both load-bearing.

The passion half tells you what motivates them and what they want more of. The dislike half tells you the activities they’ll either avoid or do poorly when forced. The composite tells you whether the role you’re hiring for is actually a fit.

Georgevich’s specific threshold:

“You’re looking for alignment, where 90% of your position is aligned with the things that they want to do. When you start getting beyond 10, 15, 20% of things that the candidate doesn’t want to do, don’t waste your time on them, no matter what they say.”

The why:

“If you bring someone in where 10 to 15 percent of the job represents stuff they’re not interested in doing, or they don’t like doing, or they didn’t like doing in their last job, they’re going to be a short-timer for you. They’re not going to last in the role. They’re not going to be excited about it. They’re either going to leave, or worse, they might stay. And that’s the last thing that you want — someone staying in a role for a paycheck and just kind of dabbling at the job.”

The recruiter takeaway: write down the actual mix of activities in the role before the interview. After the candidate’s answer to this question, score the overlap explicitly. If less than 90% of the role aligns with what they’re passionate about, the signal is the same regardless of how strong the rest of the interview was.

Question 7: “What Three Skills Are You Working On Right Now to Develop?”

In short: Georgevich’s favorite predictive question. A-players answer in seconds because they have an active growth list. C-players hesitate, hedge, and produce nothing concrete. The presence or absence of an immediate, specific answer is the diagnostic.

Save this one for the end of the interview.

What you’re testing: continuous growth behavior. A-players treat their own development as an active project. They’re learning something. They have a stretch goal. They can name three concrete skills they’re working on right now without hesitation.

Georgevich’s read on the answers:

“A-players, they will rattle three of them off just like that, and they will have no problem doing it. C-players, they’ll hem and they’ll haw and be like, ‘Well, I think, uh, I don’t know.’ Don’t waste your time on those people. If they’re not working on themselves right now to develop something, to push themselves to the next level, you’re dealing with a C-player. That’s probably one of the absolute best success-predictive questions that you can ask.”

A few signals to listen for:

• Specificity. “Public speaking” is weaker than “I’m doing 4 talks at meetups this year and recording every one.” A real growth project has a concrete shape.
• Recency. “I started this last quarter” is stronger than “I’ve been meaning to.”
• Self-direction. Did they pick the skill, or did their manager assign it? Self-directed growth is the stronger signal.
• Variety. Three skills in three different domains (technical, communication, leadership) is a stronger signal than three flavors of the same skill.

Question 8 (Bonus): “What Question Haven’t I Asked That You Wish I Had?”

In short: A safety net for candidates who underperformed in the structured questions, and a signal for candidates who have a clear self-narrative. A great answer here can recover an interview. A flat “no, nothing” answer is its own diagnostic.

Georgevich added this one almost as an afterthought, but it has real value:

“What question haven’t I asked you that you would have liked me to have asked you? This kind of throws out a lifeline to a candidate. Maybe if they’re not doing well in the interview process, this is a way to get them to talk about what they want to share, what’s most important to them. What this allows you to do is get some deeper insight into what’s on their mind.”

What good answers look like:

• A specific topic the candidate wishes had come up, usually one of their stronger achievements that the structured questions didn’t surface.
• A meta-observation about what the role really requires that the questions didn’t directly cover.
• A piece of context about a non-obvious strength.

What weak answers look like: “No, nothing really,” or a vague comment about wanting to share more with no actual content. “Then again, you’re probably dealing with a C-player,” in Georgevich’s framing.

How to Score These Questions Consistently

In short: Without a written rubric, even predictive questions decay into impressions. Build a one-page scorecard with explicit signals for each question, score the candidate during the interview, and bring evidence to the wash-up instead of gut feel.

A practical scoring layout for these 7 (or 8) questions:

Question	A-player signal	C-player signal	Score (1-3)
Why join ABC	Pattern of growth/challenge motivation	Pattern of money-only motivation
Why leave	Insight into own role; clean exits	Pattern of terminations, blame
Hired to do	Owns failures; specific outcomes	Blames external factors
Accomplishments	Specific, scaled, with detail	Daily duties dressed up
Impact	Measurable company-level change	No discernible impact
Passion / dislike	90%+ role alignment	<90% alignment with their preferences
Three skills	Three specific, current, self-directed	Hedging, can’t name any
Bonus question	Specific topic with substance	“Nothing” / flat answer

A few rules to keep this disciplined:

• Score during the interview, not after. Memory drift is real, and the wash-up is too late to score honestly.
• Bring evidence, not impressions. A-player vs C-player is the read; the evidence has to be a specific quote or pattern from their answers.
• Use the same rubric for every candidate in the loop. Different rubrics produce different scores, and you can’t compare.

A recruiting CRM that captures structured interview notes alongside the candidate record makes this consistency much easier to maintain across multiple interviewers and roles. Recrudoc’s Visual Pipeline tracks 42 actions across 7 stages, including interview notes and panel feedback, so the wash-up is grounded in evidence the whole panel can see instead of three different memories of the same interview. The next sibling post in this cluster, acing the recruiter phone screen, covers the candidate-side view of how these questions land. Useful context for recruiters too.

The seven questions are low-cost to adopt. The rubric is one page. The hard part is the discipline to actually score every candidate against the same rubric, every time. That’s where most teams drift back to gut feel, and it’s why most interviews still fail to predict success.

Want a CRM that captures structured interview evidence and makes the wash-up actually evidence-based? Try Recrudoc free for a Visual Pipeline, structured scorecards, and an audit trail of every interview action.

Sources

The insights in this article are based on the following industry expert discussion:

• “How to Hire Only the Best People - 7 Questions to ask candidates” — Don Georgevich, YouTube