What style questions should I ask potential graduate students interviewing for positions in my lab?

Question

As a converse to this question, as a professor, I find it difficult to conduct a useful interview. What types of questions should I ask which would give me a good idea as to how (1) productive and (2) self-sustaining of a student the interviewee may be? If different questions are required for each parameter, please mention that in your answer.

Answer 1

I underwent an interview recently from a prospective adviser, and I found the questions he asked of me to be pretty insightful - hence I'm sharing them here.

• Why do you want to pursue research in this specific area?

  This would highlight the candidate's motivation in wanting to do research in a particular field - and would also tell the professor more about the candidate's exposure to this area.

• What made you apply to this lab/university, as a continuation of the previous question?

  The answer would tell you whether the applicant had simply browsed the rankings list of universities, or did he/she actually go through the research publications of the lab - and the application was done due to an intersection of the two!

• What would you like to be doing post Ph.D.?

  There is no "right" answer to this, but it also tells a lot about the candidate's motivation in pursuing a PhD.

• Finally, you can ask the candidate to discuss any problem that he is familiar with in that field - doesn't have to be anything fancy/complicated, but that would serve to highlight the clarity of the applicant's reasoning, communication skills, and level of exposure to the field.

Answer 2

In addition to the questions that shan23 has mentioned, I ask candidates for my group a few other questions:

• What kind of advising style do they like? How "hands-on" or "hands-off" do they want me to be? If they want someone whose style is vastly different from mine, that's going to be a problem.

• What is your preferred working environment? (When?, Where?, etc.) I just want to get a sense of what they're going to be like to work with.

• What kinds of projects do they like? Do they want a methodology-driven project, or are they more interested in applications.

• Have you spoken with members of my group? I want future group members to have an interest in who they'll be working with.

Answer 3

This is my favorite question to ask in interviews:

Can you tell me about a problem you encountered in the laboratory, and the process you went through to troubleshoot it?

Answer 4

I think a good general question to ask is what motivates them to do their research. The answer should give you a good idea at least for the latter and depending on the level of detail maybe also for the former.