5 Interview Questions for Learning and Development Professionals

There are many general interview questions to ask to get to know a candidate. However, you may have trouble coming up with industry-specific ones. Let’s look at some more specific interview questions you need to ask when hiring Learning and Development professionals.

It’s essential to come prepared to ask industry-specific questions to ensure candidates are qualified for the role you’re filling. This is especially true for Learning and Development roles since they work directly with your employees to help them grow and develop their skills, which can lead to better performance for your business.

Read further to learn more about important questions to ask when interviewing Learning and Development candidates.

Why You Need to Ask These Questions

Interview questions are a crucial way to get to know a candidate’s skill set and how they handle different situations. Asking the right questions to learn how their experience relates to the role informs you if they’re a good fit for the job.

When interviewing for Learning and Development roles, asking candidates about their experience training in a corporate setting and how their skill set will benefit your team is important. This helps you identify if they have the necessary skills to perform the job well.

Below are five questions you can ask when interviewing Learning and Development candidates:

Questions to Ask Learning and Development Professionals

1. What is your training style? Asking this question can help identify the candidate’s approach to training. More importantly, it allows you to get insight into whether their training style aligns with your business’ goals and is compatible with your teams’ current processes.
2. What do you think are the largest obstacles employees face in growing their skills? Focusing some of your questions around people is important when interviewing Learning and Development professionals – especially around the challenges people in their trainings may face. It shows you how they would address these obstacles and can open the door for a candidate to explain their solution to this challenge.
3. How do you approach training on a topic you don’t know? In any job someone interviews for, knowing how someone handles a personal challenge is important. It’s likely that the candidate doesn’t understand the nuances within the industry you’re hiring in. This helps you understand how they would approach that learning curve. If there is a topic they’re unfamiliar with, it gives you a sense of how they learn themselves.
4. What’s the most significant challenge you’ve dealt with in previous training initiatives? Asking candidates about hurdles they’ve had in past training programs helps you see if they can handle obstacles. A good answer is someone who follows up on a challenge with a solution to how they overcame it.
5. How do you adapt trainings for individuals with a different learning style? Everyone has a different way of comprehending information, and being able to adjust the way you present information is crucial to ensuring success for participants. Ultimately, this question helps you understand how the candidate handles changing how they present information to employees and can indicate how adaptable they are to making modifications to trainings.

Hiring Can Be Time-Consuming

When hiring for Learning and Development roles, having the right questions can ensure you know if the candidate is fit for the role. However, this is only one step of the hiring process, and there are many factors involved in this process. Doing it alone can be time-consuming unless you have the right partner on your side.

When hiring for your Learning and Development team, Addison Group knows exactly what to look for when finding talent. With more than 20 years of experience hiring in the Human Resources and Administrative industry, we have the expertise to find candidates with the skills to add value to your organization. Connect with us now!